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Do you follow the science when it comes to Evolutionary Theory?
As for the question, I am not up to date with the latest science on evolution. However, I am aware that there is no denying that it is a scientific theory based on a plethora of empirical evidence and observation. I also find the concept of bringing God into this as such people have done irrelevant. Supernatural theology is outside the scope of scientific inquiry, which is based on testable and verifiable hypotheses.
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What Evidence do Atheists Have that there is no God?
@ZeusAres42
And when someone puts up such strawmen in order to ague with themselves they have to be deceiving on the onset I would think. You know, one would have to premeditate arguments that don't exist.
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What Evidence do Atheists Have that there is no God?
@Factfinder
To be fair, I doubt anyone is ever completely honest with himself. We are masters at telling stories that allow us to avoid confronting hard truths, even when deep inside we know we are lying to ourselves.
There is still a difference though between this elaborate self-deception, and outright inability to accept the most basic facts and definitions. You and I might tell ourselves that we are late for a meeting because of unexpectedly heavy traffic, rather than because of not leaving early enough - but we will not seriously say that Canada is part of the US to justify crossing the border with no documentation. Neither will these people - when it comes to things that have immediate consequences. I bet you they will not tell their bosses what they tell random debaters here.
The great thing about being relatively honest and having integrity is that you do not have to hold multiple conflicting views in your head and think about which views are applicable to which situation. You can just apply the same intellectual framework everywhere. Life is much easier this way. -
Do you follow the science when it comes to Evolutionary Theory?
I suppose God could have used evolution to create all the creatures on the planet. However, I'm just not sure I have that much faith. In the debate on abiogenesis I mentioned some questions that the faithful believers in evolution don't have workable answers to:
Has anyone ever seen life start from non-life without intelligence guiding it?
Nope.
Has anyone solved the problem of there being no viable mechanism to generate a primordial soup?
No. Scientists use to claim that the reducing atmosphere of the early universe was ideal for life. We now know that was inaccurate. The early atmosphere was probably volcanic in origin and composition, composed largely of carbon dioxide and nitrogen rather than the mixture of reducing gases assumed by the Miller-Urey model. Carbon dioxide does not support the rich array of synthetic pathways leading to possible monomers. As University College London biochemist Nick Lane stated that the primordial soup theory “doesn’t hold water” and is “past its expiration date.”
Sometimes there are appeals to panspermia to try and avoid this issue, but there is no evidence of incoming bacteria, and moon rocks are sterile. Moon rocks should be teeming with bacteria and viruses if panspermia produced life. The science suggests that is not the case.
Has anyone formed the 20 to 22 amino acids that comprise proteins naturally and all in the same environment as would be needed for life?
Nope. The Miller experiment initially claimed 3 amino acids present, and a later review found traces of 3 other ones but in very low amounts. The reason Miller found what he did was because he created a trap to prevent the naturalistic reactions that would have destroyed the amino acids created in a natural environment. That's the catch, the same reactions that create some amino acids are just as likely to destroy them also. So Miller created a trap to prevent nature from doing its thing. When asked where in nature this kind of trap would exist, Miller said he had nothing. Even granting the formation of 6 amino acids by Miller, only 10 have ever been created by naturalistic means from scratch without the use of cells. 20 different amino acids minimum are needed for even simple DNA or RNA.
Since it appears forming polymers requires a dehydration synthesis, have they been created in a puddle naturally without human assistance like Darwin said they could be?
No. The National Academy of Sciences states, “Two amino acids do not spontaneously join in water. Rather, the opposite reaction is thermodynamically favored.” Water breaks down protein chains into amino acids, it doesn't go the opposite direction.
Has the problem with the lack of a viable mechanism for producing high levels of complex and specified information been solved?
No. A bacteria has about 100+ genes and is consider way to complex to be LUCA. In fact scientists claim that LUCA would have had to have about 355 genes to be the ancestor of all known life - even more complex than bacteria or viruses. If you have code (say DNA) you need a means to translate it (say RNA). No one has solved how these could chemically happen especially without one another. While a virus can copy itself - it can't do it without being inside another cell.
Does the RNA World Hypothesis have definitive evidence that it works?
No. A serious problem is that even if you can figure out how to make proteins you need a system to self-replicate. In fact Stanley Miller said "The first step, making the monomers, that’s easy. We understand it pretty well. But then you have to make the first self-replicating polymers. That’s very easy, he says, the sarcasm fairly dripping. Just like it’s easy to make money in the stock market — all you have to do is buy low and sell high. He laughs. Nobody knows how it’s done."
Often scientists have postulated that RNA arose first - yet there are some massive problems with this issue. 1) RNA has never assemble by itself without human guided help. And 2) RNA has not been shown to perform all the necessary cellular functions currently that are carried out by proteins, so it is inadequate by itself to perform these functions.
Further, to explain the ordering of nucleotides in the first self-replicating RNA molecule, materialists must rely on sheer chance. But the odds of specifying, say, 250 nucleotides in an RNA molecule by chance is about 1 in 10^150 — below the “universal probability bound,” a term characterizing events whose occurrence is at least remotely possible within the history of the universe. (See See William A. Dembski, The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities (Cambridge University Press, 1998).)
Biochemists have spent decades struggling to get RNA to self-assemble or copy itself in the lab, and now concede that it needs a lot of help to do either.
As New York University chemist Robert Shapiro puts it "The sudden appearance of a large self-copying molecule such as RNA was exceedingly improbable. … [The probability] is so vanishingly small that its happening even once anywhere in the visible universe would count as a piece of exceptional good luck."
Unless the atheist is willing to admit miracles exist, it seems their faith is in vain.
Can the origin of the genetic code be adequately explained by unguided natural processes?
Nope. DNA provides code for how to made a structure, while the RNA reads that and creates what the code calls for. This system cannot exist unless both the genetic information and transcription/translation machinery are present at the same time, and unless both speak the same language.
"[T]he link between DNA and the enzyme is a highly complex one, involving RNA and an enzyme for its synthesis on a DNA template; ribosomes; enzymes to activate the amino acids; and transfer-RNA molecules. … How, in the absence of the final enzyme, could selection act upon DNA and all the mechanisms for replicating it? It’s as though everything must happen at once: the entire system must come into being as one unit, or it is worthless. There may well be ways out of this dilemma, but I don’t see them at the moment."- Frank B. Salisbury, “Doubts about the Modern Synthetic Theory of Evolution,”
"Life’s three core processes are intertwined. Genes carry instructions for making proteins, which means proteins only exist because of genes. But proteins are also essential for maintaining and copying genes, so genes only exist because of proteins. And proteins—made by genes—are crucial for constructing the lipids for membranes. Any hypothesis explaining life’s origin must take account of this. Yet, if we suppose that genes, metabolism and membranes were unlikely to have arisen simultaneously, that means one of them must have come first and ‘invented’ the others.” - Jeff Miller
There are dozens more issues with abiogenesis, yet to the faithful atheist 'even when science says its impossible, trust us, its possible for science." Got to love the complete science denial and science of the gaps logic there.
I'm sure my atheist friends will spend their energies in personal attacks against anyone who dares asks them to take a look at the science. What would be great though is if the faith-filled atheist explained how their belief in evolution explains the many basic and devastating chemical problems of life coming from non-life.
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What Evidence do Atheists Have that there is no God?
One cannot provide evidence or arguments for beliefs that don't exist! You can't argue or fight 'nothing'; those of faith hate this. Therefore, they will often project positions (i.e., create beliefs for you that you don't have) and then argue against them!
When they do this, they are, of course, just arguing against themselves! Literally! -
Do you follow the science when it comes to Evolutionary Theory?
@just_sayin
When whales could walk...
Thais is what qualifies as evidence, not hearsay from myth books.
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Do you follow the science when it comes to Evolutionary Theory?
A lot of people dismiss evolution without truly understanding it. I know before I accepted the science behind it I was one who rejected it. Then out of a personal need to know I dug into it, began to see how so many fields of scientific study both within the biological fields and many others seemingly unrelated. So it might be helpful to start off by working with what "theory" actually means in scientific circles as opposed to everyday use in laymen terms...
A “theory,” in scientific parlance, is best thought of as some extremely well-supported body of knowledge which can explain the behavior of, or relationships among, certain objects in the universe. One example of a scientific theory is the "germ theory of disease." This is the theory that some germs make humans sick. We take this as an obvious fact now, but just several hundred years ago, many attributed disease to evil spirits and other causes that seem strange to us now. Another example of a scientific theory is plate tectonics, which is the idea that the surface of the world is divided into a series of plates that interact at their edges, causing the formations of mountains and volcanoes, as well as triggering earthquakes. (It is probably worth noting, again, that not so long ago in human history, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes were sometimes attributed to supernatural forces). So, you can see that the scientific usage of the word "theory” is very different from its usage in day-to-day discourse, where it indicates a hunch or poorly formed idea (e.g., that the Cleveland Browns are going to win the Super Bowl next year).
https://www.digitalatlasofancientlife.org/learn/evolution/
https://youtu.be/Yjr0R0jgct4
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What Evidence do Atheists Have that there is no God?
One cannot provide evidence or arguments for beliefs that don't exist! You can't argue or fight 'nothing'; those of faith hate this. Therefore, they will often project positions (i.e., create beliefs for you that you don't have) and then argue against them!
When they do this, they are, of course, just arguing against themselves! Literally! -
What Evidence do Atheists Have that there is no God?
I agree ignorance has a major role, But I also think in Just_sayin's case he isn't being completely honest, not even to himself.MayCaesar said:
People like this are usually just incredibly ignorant. He has no idea that abiogenesis is not a part of the evolution theory either. People who know the least usually yell the loudest, something Socrates pointed out ~2,500 years ago.OakTownA said:
To continue to claim that "atheists" ("You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.") claim that the universe was "created from nothing" indicates that you are either not paying attention to arguments presented or you are an interlocutor acting in bad faith.
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What Evidence do Atheists Have that there is no God?
@Joeseph
BTW STILL WAITING ON YOUR PROMISED DEFENCE OF BIBLICAL SLAVERY YOU CHICKENED OUT , WHYS THAT?
I've been waiting for that too. But his negligence tends to make me think he'd just repeat previous absurdities as "evidence".
