Interesting video about evolution and origins.

[Brian2]

No! The foundation of most atheist apology is lack of evidence. Without evidence for God, no God is the logical default.
There is no need for atheists to defend a non-position. There slate is already blank. No God is the starting point for the dispute.

True, if there were no evidence then non belief is the logical default. But theists have their own evidence and just because it is not verifiable that does not mean that it is not evidence.
But that's OK you can ignore whatever you want to ignore. You can say that witness evidence is just hearsay and that prophecy did not happen and even if hundreds of Biblical prophecies came true, that is no good reason to believe.

 

[Brian2]

["Appeal to ignorance is also known as argument from ignorance, in which ignorance represents “a lack of contrary evidence” and becomes “a fallacy in informal logic.” It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven as false."] -- Appeal to Ignorance

Which parts of science show that Quetzalcoatl does not exist?
Do you believe in Quetzalcoatl?

It's great that people are telling me about the 1001 logical fallacies that can be made. But to make those fallacies one needs to have made a logical argument. Much of the logical fallacy complaining is made against things that aren't even meant to be logical arguments for or against. And anyway, even if the complaints were legitimate, a logical fallacy does not automatically make something wrong.

 

[Valjean]

Which organisation are you referring to?



So you think that ASA is biased because it gives a view of the science as seen from the pov of science that allows for the existence of God.
I would say that their view is relevant also and not to be dismissed just because of their religious affiliations.
To dismiss the organisation would be to dismiss individual scientists in the organisation and to also dismiss what they say without giving it consideration.

I dismiss their methodology. Science is based on observation, hypothesis formulation, testing and review. None of this applies to the religious views of the scientists. They are not scientific opinions. They are faith-based appeals to folklore and personal incredulity. These do not merit any epistemic validity.

Scientific methodology does not allow spirits because they have not been demonstrated to exist. However this could just be because they are spirits and science cannot test or examine spirits.

Well, if there's no way to determine whether they exist or not, and no reason to suppose they do, why would anyone treat them as legitimate possibilities? How would their existential status be any different from that of Sauron, Isis, or leprechauns?

The truth is that because of this and that God and spirits cannot be falsified, they are not a question for science and do have evidence outside the realm of science.
Do you think that science plodding on and coming up with potential answers that cross over into theology and deny it, is bias on the part of science, which is blind to the unfalsifiable evidence for God, and so has to end up suggesting wrong naturalistic answers even if a God exists?

 

[exchemist]

You obviously have an enormous lack of reading comprehension.

Sigh……..Do try to keep up!

Once again:

Read very carefully…..all the words……
Who am I saying has a cognitive bias?
My original posting about the ASA being a religious organization with obvious biases was
post #58

True….. you did attempt to conflate the two when you asked in post #102:

To which I answered in post #118:

Again, read very carefully……all the words……
Who am I talking about here?

I then gave you a link to an explanation of
confirmation bias (which you suffer from in spades!)
You conceded that the ASA is a religious organization in post #112:

Unfortunately you suffered from the misconception that they are also an organization that “does science”, which is absolutely false.

I had eluded to this fact in post #62, which you apparently couldn’t pick up on the nuance.

To help illuminate this for you…an analogy…..
Imagine a baking club called the “Scientist Bakers Affiliation” (SBA) whose members are scientists and people in related fields;
When they get together to bake……
they’re baking, not “doing science”.

From the link about the ASA posted before in post #58:
Scientists who were Christians and had concerns about the quality of Christian evangelism on the subject of religion and science formed the ASA in 1941.
(American Scientific Affiliation - Wikipedia)

Again, read very carefully……all the words……
Nothing about “doing science”….
All about “Christian evangelism”.

As for Sye Garte:
I am not familiar with Sye Garte’s scientific work so I am not in a position to comment about his work within his field of science.
That being said……considering his affiliation with the ASA and as I explained in post #118:

If he is able to compartmentalize his religious beliefs from his scientific work he may be able to perform meaningful scientific work.
If he is not able to compartmentalize his religious beliefs from his scientific work he runs a high risk of biases and thereby discrediting his work.

This may well be too nuanced for you…..
but try to notice the difference between
“is able to” and “is not able to”.

A quick perusal of his peer reviewed work (this is work which as been subjected to scientific scrutiny) seems to predominantly focus on cancers and carcinogens……..
Nothing remotely associated with abiogenesis.
If I missed it please point it out to me.
It is plausible that he is able to compartmentalize his religious beliefs within his actual field of work.

As both you and I have pointed out, the video which you linked was him speaking at a Christian apologist convention and that he wasn’t “doing science”, but rather performing in the role of a Christian apologist.
The fact he began his spiel with:
“How many here have a PhDs in biochemistry?…
Great so I can say anything I want.”
Along with the title “BioChemist Argues God Exists…”
Indicates that he (as have you) is purporting to bring his science training and experience to bear in an attempt to impress the gullible as to be speaking with authority on the subject.
Unfortunately, he is not applying any scientific training to his “argument”.

Now (hopefully after careful reading) show me where I need to “make up my mind”.

I agree with much of this and thanks for drawing my attention to the ASA, which I had not been aware of previously.

However, in fairness to the ASA, it looks as if it was founded to teach American evangelicals to drop the pseudoscience of "flood geology" etc and understand that evolution and the scientifically estimated age of the earth need to be accepted and need not conflict with religious faith. For instance there was a guy called Kulp: J. Laurence Kulp - Wikipedia who was both a fundamentalist Christian (Plymouth Brethren, no less, which is pretty much off the scale at the fundie end of the spectrum) and a pioneer in radiometric dating! He must have wrestled with some serious cognitive dissonance, until he resolved it. Kulp apparently did much to get the current scientific view of the age of the earth accepted in extreme Protestant circles, i.e. YEC -> OEC, which is a good start.

What the ASA seems to have rightly foreseen is that if extreme Protestantism persisted in rejecting well-established science, it would become an object of contempt and ridicule among educated people and would fall from favour. As it has. It is therefore particularly depressing now to see people like Garte and Tour apparently trying to send the original initiative into reverse by substituting the God of the Gaps for normal scientific enquiry into abiogenesis.

In view of its history, I don't consider that the statement of faith of the ASA is ipso facto evidence of any bias in its view of science. That statement serves to emphasise that evangelicals can trust its scientific teaching not to be some sort of Trojan Horse for atheism, as some of them might otherwise fear. Its members in the past have evidently managed the separation of religion from their own scientific work, just as you say they should.

What I do not know, and the Wiki article doesn't help, is whether the original purpose of the ASA may have more recently become subverted by people like Garte who want to replace science by the God of the Gaps or other pseudoscience. It would not surprise me in the cultural climate of the modern USA.

 

[Valjean]

It sounds like you are pointing to the idea that there is no God, even though you deny it.
Science finding out how things work is one thing.
Science telling us how the universe and life came into existence is beyond science telling us how things work, and you don't know that God was not needed for those things.

Why do you say these inquiries are beyond the purview of science? I'd bet you are unfamiliar with the evidence these hypotheses and opinions are based on.

But of course science is never going to say that God is needed because science cannot test for God and so cannot find God.

No. More because the phenomena in question can be explained with ordinary, observable, familiar, testable physics and chemistry. A special pleading based on neither evidence or need makes no sense.

Science does not say that God is not needed to keep things working, that is something that comes from the mouth of atheists.
Atheists (or many atheists at least) seem to have convinced themselves that only verifiable and falsifiable evidence is evidence and so have eliminated the Bible as evidence for a start and anything else that cannot be proven one way or the other.

So how would you define evidence? You seem to include tradition and mythology -- but only currently popular mythology.
Why do you think it reasonable to believe completely unsupported folklore? Why is your favorite folklore more believable than that of the ancient Egyptians or the Zulus? I see no evidentiary difference.

I don't know what a spirit is but it is not part of the material universe.
I know that God is a spirit because I believe the Bible and because anything that is part of the universe and controlled by the universe is not God.

But isn't your belief in God and the Bible based on unsupported assumptions?
I believe your faith and mythology was downloaded before you developed any assessment tools or critical, analytical capacity. It's become hard-wired.

God has had an effect on the lives of billions of people and that can be seen. The only problem is that it is not proveable that God did it.
Are you trying to tell me that belief in God is a faith and that you only believe what can be objectively shown to be true?

What can be shown objectively is not faith. What cannot is imaginary.
No, God has not had an effect. Belief in various gods has had an effect, and, inasmuch as the beliefs are different and contradictory, they're not epistemically reliable.

OK so you reject faith that has evidence that is not verifiable.

Wouldn't that be reasonable? Isn't that why you reject belief in dragons, Odin, leprechauns and orcs?
Isn't there just as much evidence for Quetzalcoatl as there is for God?

So atheists aren't wanting to discredit theology so they come to a religious forum to do what?

To question apologists' reasoning and epistemology.

You see theists already know that what they believe is not verifiable and we can tell atheists that and have, and they know. So what is the real reason atheists are on this forum?

Q: If what you believe is not verifiable, why do you believe and defend it so fervently?

Atheists are here because we're interested in reality, how the world works, psychology, epistemology, religion, sociology, anthropology, politics, history, &c. We're curious people
Religious believers, it seems, are not. They prefer a comfortable, reassuring mythology that they don't have to actually think about.
Thinking is hard....

I don't try to prove God's existence by science, but try to show that the idea that God is not needed and has been shown not to be needed is rubbish,,,,,

Why? Hasn't science had an unparalleled run, expanding human knowledge and understanding beyond anything religion ever achieved?
What is the idea of God needed for? What explanatory power does it have?

and the idea that science can say how the universe and life came to be is rubbish,,,,,,,,,

Why? and what alternative explanations are there?

It's usually a case of trying to show that anti God ideas are rubbish, but is not a case of trying to prove God by science.

Science doesn't to prove God, for the same reason it hasn't tried to prove orcs or the tooth færie.

What he did say is something that atheists do, squeeze science into any gap in scientific knowledge, thus making a science of the gaps. And he did not need to be a Professor to see that. I have been saying it for years.

Science is perfectly comfortable with gaps. Gaps are science's bread and butter. It generates them all the time.

Nobody these days is into the false God of the gaps argument except atheists, who think that every time a natural mechanism is found, that eliminates the need for God even more. But that is not a rational way to look at the world really.
And it's fine that Garte's arguments aren't impressive to you or anyone else. We are all entitled to our ideas but it is good to keep science neutral and not just saying what the atheists want it to say,,,,,,,,,,, that God is being eliminated and shown to not be needed.

We may be entitled to our ideas, but those ideas are not necessarily rational. Not all ideas are epistemically equal. The rationality of our ideas is determinable.
How is God being eliminated? Science basically ignores the whole concept. Religion's panic at the notion of evidenced belief and an unnecessary god is telling. It seems like they realize their house is built on sand, and needs vigorous defense to remain intact.

 

[Valjean]

True, if there were no evidence then non belief is the logical default. But theists have their own evidence and just because it is not verifiable that does not mean that it is not evidence.

What is this non-verifiable evidence? How is it evidence if it's only imaginary, and not demonstrable?
Are you including personal experience and emotion a evidence?

But that's OK you can ignore whatever you want to ignore. You can say that witness evidence is just hearsay and that prophecy did not happen and even if hundreds of Biblical prophecies came true, that is no good reason to believe.

But unless the actual witness testifies, it is hearsay, by definition!

We have actual, first-person testimony from witnesses to all sorts of things: little green men, leprechauns, chupacabras, moth-men, angels and dæmons. A common traffic accident will generate a dozen contradictory accounts.

Even first-person, eyewitness accounts are unreliable. Are you seriously saying that told and retold, thousandth-hand stories by unknown people are reliable?
There are fulfilled prophecies in every religion, and most are so vague and non-specific that they're not even recognized as prophecies till someone tries to shoehorn them into a narrative.

 

[Valjean]

It's great that people are telling me about the 1001 logical fallacies that can be made. But to make those fallacies one needs to have made a logical argument.

No. One doesn't even have to have made an argument. Any conclusion or statement of fact can involve bad reasoning.

Much of the logical fallacy complaining is made against things that aren't even meant to be logical arguments for or against.

The complaints are about unsupported or erroneous statements, conclusion or facts

And anyway, even if the complaints were legitimate, a logical fallacy does not automatically make something wrong.

Quite so, it just makes it unfounded or irrational; epistemically useless.

 

[Brian2]

Two things it seems to me one needs to keep in mind, though, are the lack of competition, and the lack of predation, back at the start of life. Suboptimal or inefficient replicating biochemical structures would have had a far easier time surviving than they would now.

I suppose, yes.

A third, and vastly bigger, issue to keep in mind as well is the enormous span of time we are dealing with here. The number of replicating cycles involved is unimaginably vast. So for a trial and error process, the opportunities for optimising (via natural selection) would also have been vast.

True, each system that protects the accuracy would have had to work or not however and I hear there are quite a few of these systems and they are complicated chemically. It seems to me that they more reasonably would have been put in place as and so protection of the genes and replication etc seems to be a goal put there by a designer.

P.S. You never got back to me on my post 78, in which I ask you where in the video Garte claims the idea of a biochemical origin of life is "not scientifically sound", as you put it. I'd be interested to watch that specific bit, as from his Biologos paper I doubt he really means that. I think he is more subtle than to make such a statement.

That seems to be at 23-25 mins.

 

[exchemist]

The thing about science is that if scientists don't draw a line in the sand for whatever reason, then science is not going to tell us that it is time to stop searching.
In this case the reason could be that it is a futile search to find the origins of life when all it can ever be is educated guesses. The reason might be that wanting nature to provide the laboratory conditions that science demands is silly, and then to change those conditions for us at another stage of the process is beyond silly.

I don't really understand this. Two points:

Why do you think science would "draw a line in the sand" and stop searching? The whole lesson of science, ever since its birth after the Renaissance, is that it has proved able to provide answers to questions about nature that nobody could answer before. So why would it be a good idea to give up? All areas of active research in science attempt to extend our knowledge. It seems highly perverse to argue, in effect, that because we don't already know the answer we should stop trying to find one. That would be nuts, wouldn't it? So why would it be a good idea to declare the origin of life, arbitrarily, out of all the unresolved issues in science, off-limits? What is special about life that makes you think it should be exempt from scientific study?

Secondly, what is this about "laboratory conditions"? Science does not demand laboratory conditions. Ask any astrophysicist or earth scientist. Again, this nonsense about a need for "laboratories" is an old creationist chestnut that does not withstand a moment's examination.

You are one of the more thoughtful and informed people on the forum. I don't think these arguments are up to scratch for someone like you.

 

[exchemist]

I suppose, yes.



True, each system that protects the accuracy would have had to work or not however and I hear there are quite a few of these systems and they are complicated chemically. It seems to me that they more reasonably would have been put in place as and so protection of the genes and replication etc seems to be a goal put there by a designer.



That seems to be at 23-25 mins.

Thanks. My post 172 refers. I was disappointed to find Garte is after all no more than another God of the Gaps merchant. You see, the thing is, what real arguments can these guys make that are not just versions of the Argument from Personal Incredulity?

I had been hoping, from his Biologos article, that Garte would have a sophisticated view, more like that of Kenneth Miller, say. In other words, someone who sees God in the workings of nature but who does not feel the need to believe that God has to tinker with His creation as if it were a badly made car.

 

[Brian2]

What we say is that the scientific explanations work very well in explaining things on their own, without the need of adding a god to the equation.
That's NOT the same thing as saying that science shows there is no god.

Please, please, try to understand this.

Yes scientific explanations work well without the need to add a God but that is not the case with origins science, which is imo not true science. It is educated guesses of what might have happened if God did not do it, and it cannot be verified.

Now you've stepped outside of the realm of observation and science and have moved into the realm of magical thinking where you get to imagine that spirits are real without having to demonstrate that they are real.

I can do that when just discussing things person to person without any scientific need to prove everything.
It sounds like you are saying that you believe spirits are just in peoples' imaginations (even when there are many observations).
But if you are saying that it means that you are saying you believe spirits are not real.
But no you wouldn't be saying that would you?
What you should be saying is that you lack belief in spirits because you don't like the evidence for them,,,,,,,,,,,,,, or even that you think it is really not evidence because it cannot be verified or falsified.

It's not just atheists who should rely on verifiable evidence - it's everyone.

Why don't you need verifiable evidence to believe what you believe?

Theology discredits itself.

Aaaaand we're back to believing what we want to believe because we want to believe it - faith.

I believe the evidence I have for the Bible God and you for some reason want to deny that it is evidence.
Nobody NEEDS verifiable evidence to believe what they believe. Some people just say they refuse to believe things that have no verifiable evidence.

 

[Brian2]

What's unreasonable is this implied incredulity fallacy. He considers the task beyond unconscious nature's capacity. Why? He just can't see how it could have happened, and so makes the unreasonable (fallacious) assumption that it did not.

It sounds like an implied incredulity fallacy the way you put it. What he actually said is that the argument for chemical evolution is very weak,,,,,, and he gives some reasons for that. In this way it sound like what a scientist might say if arguing against a hypothesis.
And even if it had been a logical fallacy that proves nothing, because logical fallacies can still be correct.

It's also a straw man. The researchers investigating abiogenesis are just hoping anything, nor is there any particular preconceived path from simple molecules to life.

If it is a straw man it is a straw man of my making, since I was trying to paraphrase him.

Bible prophecy is not evidence for superhuman prescience much less a supernatural origin. Scientific prophecy runs circles around biblical prophecy, yet doesn't suggest superhuman prescience much less a supernatural origin, either.

As I have said before, the 2 (science Vs religious prophecy) are not the same thing. Science prophecy is like predicting that the sun will also rise the next day. Religious prophecy has no science behind the prediction, but is something done from prescience and sometimes over hundreds or even thousands of years and sometimes it is not just one event but is about a time in the earth's history, with many events foretold.
Still religious prophecy in the Bible is 100% accurate or it is not from God.
If you believed the prophecies actually were real then you would probably see their divine origins.
As it is you reject faith based thought and so your arguments against it are nothing but cognitive bias and your views can be rejected by a person of faith.
But hang on, that would just be me being biased in not considering what you are saying to see if it is reasonable and convincing.

Critical thinkers reject faith-based thought. If an organization announces that its worldview is faith-based, it has nothing of interest to say to such a person.

You steadfastly insist on making this error, the one I call unbelief/disbelief conflation. You also refuse to discuss the matter even such as to say you disagree or even that you don't understand what is being told to you. I'd like to know if this is some sort of cognitive sleight-of-hand of which you are unaware or done knowingly and without interest in the inherent dishonesty of such a debate tactic. I've always assumed the former, but your evasion of the topic suggests otherwise.

As I have said, Christians see the Bible God as the only true God and so using science to show that the Bible God is not true, is using science to show God does not exist. You do that.

The parts that refute Old Testament myths. The deity that allegedly created the world in six days including the first two human beings doesn't exist. How do we know? Those things never happened.

Science seems to have shown that the universe had a beginning. The 6 literal days bit is your interpretation when it can be shown that "day" does not have to mean that.
We don't know that Adam and Eve did not exist.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

the 2 (science Vs religious prophecy) are not the same thing. Science prophecy is like predicting that the sun will also rise the next day. Religious prophecy has no science behind the prediction, but is something done from prescience and sometimes over hundreds or even thousands of years and sometimes it is not just one event but is about a time in the earth's history, with many events foretold.

Prediction is prediction. It's either accurate or it's not. We use one set of standards to decide that.

If you believed the prophecies actually were real then you would probably see their divine origins.

Agreed. That's how confirmation bias works. You see what you have chosen to believe by faith. If one believes that there is such a thing as a divine origin, one then sees it in the objects and events in the world.

you reject faith based thought and so your arguments against it are nothing but cognitive bias

Yes, my preference for empiricism over faith as a path to truth is a bias - a rational bias derived from experience.

Christians see the Bible God as the only true God and so using science to show that the Bible God is not true, is using science to show God does not exist.

What I said is that science has excluded the Abrahamic god. You didn't try to address that.

The 6 literal days bit is your interpretation

Yes, and it's almost certainly a correct one. The Bible writers meant six literal days of work followed by one of rest. How do we know? Those days each had a morning and an evening fixing them at 24 hours. And the commandment to emulate the day of rest is to rest for 24 hours, from sunset to sunset.

 

[Dao Hao Now]

So you think that ASA is biased because it gives a view of the science as seen from the pov of science that allows for the existence of God.

No, I know it is biased because it is a religious organization that has a preconceived, stated declaration that God is the basis for science:

“3. We believe that in creating and preserving the universe God has endowed it with contingent order and intelligibility, the basis of scientific investigation.”
(https://network.asa3.org/page/ASAbeliefs)


Did you not read the brief description of confirmation bias I posted in post #118?:

“Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or values. People display this bias when they select information that supports their views, ignoring contrary information, or when they interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing attitudes.”

Again, read very carefully……all the words……

Did you not follow the link in the same post in order to get a more in-depth understanding concerning conformation bias?
You sorely need it in my opinion.
Here it is again; I would highly suggest you give it a perusal…….

Confirmation bias - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

To dismiss the organisation would be to dismiss individual scientists in the organisation and to also dismiss what they say without giving it consideration.

I explained all this in posts #118 and #197
Try giving those another go.
Again…..read very carefully…….all the words.

Scientific methodology does not allow spirits because they have not been demonstrated to exist.

Here you are nearly correct……
With the caveat that science doesn’t “allow or not allow” anything;
it merely attempts to gather objective, demonstrable, repeatable, testable, falsifiable evidence and then make reliable, testable predictions based on that data in order to confirm if its relevance.
If a proposal fails to live up to these standards, it is either adjusted to integrate the confirmed data or if it cannot do so, is rejected.
Since “spirits” have never been shown to live up to these standards they are rejected until such time as they can.

It’s not a matter of “allow” or “not allow”, its a matter of living up to standards or failing to.

Can you provide any relevant evidence that does meet such qualifications?
If you can, you would be the first among a multitude of failed attempts to do so.

However this could just be because they are spirits and science cannot test or examine spirits. The truth is that because of this and that God and spirits cannot be falsified, they are not a question for science and do have evidence outside the realm of science.

Do these “spirits” and/or God have an affect on anything in the known universe?
This is a challenge I gave you in post #120, that you never bothered to respond to: (I wonder why that is?)

If God has an effect in the universe, then that effect should be objectively detectable.
Please show where that has been done using objective evidence.

Allow me to give you an example of how this works:
Surely you have heard the terms “dark matter” and “dark energy”….yes?
Neither of these have been directly observed or are currently known what they are; they have thus far eluded any attempts to determine their nature other than that they do not appear to react with any know light or radiation we currently have knowledge of.
We are aware of them due to the fact that they have a measurable effect on things within the universe.
In the case of “dark matter”, it effects the gravitation of galaxies and regions of space to a demonstrable degree. It cause measurable gravitational lensing which helps us determine its potential mass…. thus the term “dark matter”.
In the case of “dark energy”, it effects the expansion of the universe in a demonstrable, measurable way. It appears to be a force that is pushing the expansion of the known universe…thus the term “dark energy”.

Can you give any example of how “spirits” or God is effecting anything on Earth or within the known universe in a similar (or any) demonstrable, measurable way?

Do you think that science plodding on and coming up with potential answers that cross over into theology and deny it, is bias on the part of science, which is blind to the unfalsifiable evidence for God, and so has to end up suggesting wrong naturalistic answers even if a God exists?

Please show me where science is “coming up with potential answers that cross over into theology and deny it”.

 

[Dao Hao Now]

It sounds like you are pointing to the idea that there is no God, even though you deny it.

Give me a quote were this is the case.

I explained in post #120;

Science is a method of gaining knowledge about the way things work by eliminating biases and seeking objective, demonstrable, repeatable, testable evidence to support hypothesis that explain it.
God doesn’t factor into it since there has never been any evidence of one that meets that criteria, and everything that has been discovered about how things work has never been in need of one.

Again, read very carefully…….all the words…..

Science finding out how things work is one thing.
Science telling us how the universe and life came into existence is beyond science telling us how things work,

Is this what you really meant to say?
Are you suggesting that learning how something begins (comes into existence) is not a part of how it works?
Isn’t how it is potentially formed and initiates an integral part of how it works?…..seriously?

and you don't know that God was not needed for those things.

Again, at least attempt reading comprehension;
Read very carefully……all the words……

What I ( and several others) have explained to you is that ……

you can’t prove a negative.

However, you should be able to prove a positive….
Which part of science shows that a God DOES exist?

Nobody “knows” (can prove the negative) that God was not needed for those things, nor that pan-galactic pixies are not needed, nor that Xanfilel was not needed for those things to happen.
However, until such time as God, the pan-galatic pixies, and/or Xanfilel are demonstrated to exist and had an effect which had anything to do with the genesis of anything, there is no reason to attempt to factor them into it.

So once again;

Can you objectively demonstrate that God, the pan-galactic pixies, and/or Xanfilel exist?

If you manage to do that, which would be a novel (of a new and unusual kind; different from anything seen or known before) accomplishment,
can you consequently objectively demonstrate that all or any of them had a objectively demonstrable effect on how any of those things formed or initiated?

But of course science is never going to say that God is needed because science cannot test for God and so cannot find God.

If you could objectively demonstrate that “God is needed”, science would have no problem saying so.
And if God were objectively, demonstrably shown to exist and had a demonstrable, measurable effect on anything it should be able to be tested for.

Science does not say that God is not needed to keep things working, that is something that comes from the mouth of atheists.

This is of course a silly anthromorphizing of “science”.
Nowhere within any science discipline has there ever been any indication that any god (much Yahweh) is needed or in any way a factor.
And, since as you have admitted science is conducted by a wide variety of people with a wide variety of religious affiliations and not solely atheists, it is obviously not just atheists who accept this fact, but a wide variety of scientists with a wide variety of faiths.

I don't know what a spirit is but it is not part of the material universe.

If you don’t know what a spirit is….how do you know it’s “not part of the material universe”?
How did you determine that there is anything other than the “material universe”?

I know that God is a spirit because I believe the Bible

So you believe that God is a spirit (although you admit to not knowing what a spirit is) because you believe the Bible.
How do you elevate your belief in God to the status of “knowledge”?

and because anything that is part of the universe and controlled by the universe is not God.

Do you not believe that God controls the universe?
Are those things that are alive not part of the universe?
What do you mean by “controlled by the universe”?…….Do you think the universe (which according to you is not God) has a will and exercises a conscious “control” beyond the control of God?

God has had an effect on the lives of billions of people and that can be seen. The only problem is that it is not proveable that God did it.

So you concede that God does not have an objective, demonstrable effect in the universe including on the lives of billions of people.

Are you trying to tell me that belief in God is a faith

You have admitted this yourself…one example:

What you have to realise is that belief in God is a faith

Correct?

and that you only believe what can be objectively shown to be true?

For anything of consequence and non trivial, correct.

I can see that you have difficulty imagining something so foreign to your method of rationing.

OK so you reject faith that has evidence that is not verifiable.

Correct……it’s called being rational.

So atheists aren't wanting to discredit theology so they come to a religious forum to do what?
You see theists already know that what they believe is not verifiable and we can tell atheists that and have, and they know. So what is the real reason atheists are on this forum?

The reading comprehension difficulties again, eh?
Try rereading the quote you were responding to again…….read carefully……all the words.
It’s all right there……

Atheists that I am aware of aren’t “wanting to discredit theology” (it tends to discredit itself) but rather asking for verifiable objective evidence that the god/s that any given theology is based on actually exists.
The fact that theists can’t provide that, is a problem for theists….not for atheists.

Beyond that, I’m personally amused and amazed at the mental gymnastics that many theists use to contort reality in order to hang on to their faith.

So, since you freely grant that “theists already know that what they believe is not verifiable”,
why do you try to smuggle in a guise of scientific authority in an attempt to “verify” that those Christian apologists (who may have a degree in a science discipline) are leaning on their scientific training when they drag out the tired old god of the gaps arguments in attempts to convince credulous laymen that their/your unverifiable beliefs are valid?……particularly to the science community.

I don't try to prove God's existence by science, but try to show that the idea that God is not needed and has been shown not to be needed is rubbish,,,,

Unfortunately, you fail miserably at that attempt.
You would need to prove a negative…which is not possible.

and the idea that science can say how the universe and life came to be is rubbish

What is it that you base this opinion on?

It's usually a case of trying to show that anti God ideas are rubbish

The whole persecution complex us really unbecoming.
Again, ……it’s not “anti God”, it’s simply not accepting the unverifiable evidence you freely admit to, and carrying on without taking it into account until such time as it might be objectively demonstrated to be valid.
Looking at the vast accomplishments in the very short relative history of the scientific method;
it doesn’t appear to be hampering it in anyway.

What he did say is something that atheists do, squeeze science into any gap in scientific knowledge, thus making a science of the gaps. And he did not need to be a Professor to see that. I have been saying it for years.
Nobody these days is into the false God of the gaps argument except atheists, who think that every time a natural mechanism is found, that eliminates the need for God even more. But that is not a rational way to look at the world really.

Here is an excellent example of the mental gymnastics, I referred to a moment ago.

I’ll offer you a couple links:
(God of the gaps - Wikipedia)
And
(Critical thinking - Wikipedia)

See how many contortions you require to square your statement with reality.

If you manage to get through the critical thinking link, I strongly suggest following up in the “further reading” section with the link to cognitive bias mitigation; This could be very beneficial to you, so long as you concentrate on the reading comprehension that you’ve demonstrated you have challenges with.

And it's fine that Garte's arguments aren't impressive to you or anyone else. We are all entitled to our ideas but it is good to keep science neutral and not just saying what the atheists want it to say,,,,,,,,,,, that God is being eliminated and shown to not be needed.

Science is neutral…. it’s that fact that you have issues with.
Again, don’t forget that wide variety of scientists that hold a wide variety of religious affiliations that make up the science community, as opposed to how you appear to conflate scientists and atheists.

 

[Brian2]

Well that is just a foolish argument on his part and shows a lack of knowledge about paleontology. It was never predicted that we would have entire lines of descent for any major species. There is no need for such a record. Tell me, if you are missing photographs of some of your great great grandparents does that mean that you were still not a line of descent that goes even further back? What the theory of evolution predicts and needs is for every discovered fossil to fit within the theory. And if the theory was false then there would be no need for ever discovered fossil to do that. If life was created we could always have found a "Precambrian Bunny Rabbit". There could be many other possible violations of the law of monophyly.

Do you understand how this is a poor argument about evolution? It has been tested and confirmed millions of times by fossil finds alone. Demanding "missing links" is just sheer ignorance.

Abd yes, IC has only been put into the form of a scientific hypothesis once. It was quickly refuted. Now its present definition puts it into the realm of pseudoscience since there is no way to test it.

But you could always show me to be wrong. Please answer these questions:

1. What is the hypothesis of IC.

2. What predictions does it make? Some of these need to be de novo predictions. You cannot legitimately base it on just what was known before people came up with the idea.

3. What test based upon its predictions could possibly refute it?

I eagerly await your response. By the way, as we learn more and more there are new ways that theories are tested. For example when it came to human evolution the difference in the number of chromosomes raised some questions. Other closes related species have different number of chromosomes too, so that was not a killer. But what we knew that we needed to find was either one join in our history or three different splits in the histories of the other great apes. And they needed to match up. In other words if we had a two chromosomes that matched up we would need to be able to find those two chromosomes in the other apes. And when we were able to fully analyze the genome we found exactly that. That was a test that could have put a big dent into our relationship to other apes. We did not know going in. Instead since it confirmed what was predicted that is now scientific evidence for human evolution. That is the sort of thing needed for IC to be more than pseudoscience.

What came to mind is the flagellum motor.
If you want, you can do the science on it to see if it could work if it was reduced in complexity.
I have also given you a video from the Discovery Institute with Stephen Meyer talking about Michael Behe and his discoveries.
I know they are biased and are liars so enjoy.

flagella motor and Behe - Google Search

 

[Subduction Zone]

What came to mind is the flagellum motor.
If you want, you can do the science on it to see if it could work if it was reduced in complexity.
I have also given you a video from the Discovery Institute with Stephen Meyer talking about Michael Behe and his discoveries.
I know they are biased and are liars so enjoy.

flagella motor and Behe - Google Search

No need. I am well aware of the flagellum motor and how it was shown not to be IC.

 

[Brian2]

Yes.
And those problems are all the "GodDidIt" has.
And it keeps getting less and less.

Do you think science is looking for god?
funny that.

It seems that the problems are not getting less, but are becoming more. Each possible answer provides more questions.
No science is not looking for God,,,,,,,,,, science is looking for an answer in nature.

 

[Brian2]

Science is more than educated guesswork It involves attempts to discredit its own findings.

So better educated guesses.
But you are right, science is more than educated guess work,,,,,,,,, or should be.
So is it real science to make educated guesses about how the universe and life came to be?

 

[Subduction Zone]

It seems that the problems are not getting less, but are becoming more. Each possible answer provides more questions.
No science is not looking for God,,,,,,,,,, science is looking for an answer in nature.

That may be because the easy problems are always solved first in the sciences. How life started is a very difficult one. And one thing to remember is that we knew far less about the inner workings of cells just at the turn of the millennium. Now almost 23 years later we do have a pretty good idea. A lot of what we know would not be needed for abiogenesis, but we still really needed to know it before we could get a full answer.

So hard problems first, easy problems later, but even with that solved problems always look rather easy to solve, once someone has solved them.