Interesting video about evolution and origins.

[Brian2]

No, you have to stop that. The problem with the supernatural is that there is no evidence for it.

Of course there is evidence for the supernatural, just not verifiable evidence, like there is no verifiable evidence that the universe and life came about naturally.

And one more point. If you think that evolution is "by chance" then you do not even understand the most simple version of it.

If you think there is no "by chance" in evolution then you don't understand it.

 

[LuisDantas]

Of course there is evidence for the supernatural, just not verifiable evidence, like there is no verifiable evidence that the universe and life came about naturally.



If you think there is no "by chance" in evolution then you don't understand it.

This... is just wrong.

 

[Brian2]

I won't say that he lied, in that video, but I saw some clear errors. He kept comparing how complex modern life is. That can be refuted by a "So what?" Yes, modern life is very complex. That is because even the "simplest" of life has a 3.8 year history of evolution. The early extremely simple life could not compete with modern life. The earliest of life may not have been much more than a naturally forming lipid vesicle surrounding some self replicating RNA. Not much more than that was needed at the time.

Sounds easy. I wonder what all the abiogenesis people are doing if you have it all figured out.

 

[exchemist]

If someone believes that Genesis 1 can only be read purely literally then it seems that evolution has shown that the Bible God is not true, and since the Bible God is the only true God imo, that means that evolution has disproven God.



Examples would be the creation of the universe and the giving of life.
They are beliefs but only as much as saying that they happened naturally are beliefs.

Yes, this is sort of true, but do not assert or imply a false equivalence here. The faith we place in science (or, if you prefer, the "belief" that it can provide answers to questions about how nature works) is itself evidence-based. We can see for ourselves the enormous progress humanity has made in understanding nature since the Renaissance by applying the principle of methodological naturalism and reliance on confirmed observations.

It is methodological naturalism that has enabled us to move on from considering lightning strikes, earthquakes and diseases as "acts of God" that humanity can't predict or manage. So yes, we have a "belief", if you like, that this principle can also lead us to understand other, harder questions about nature too.

What I still do not understand and you have yet to answer, in spite of my asking you more than once, is why some Christians are so resistant to the idea that this perfectly standard principle should also be applicable to the issue of the origin and development of life.

Is it that these Christians see something unique in life that should exempt it from scientific explanation? If so what and why? Something theological, to do with the relationship between God and humanity, perhaps?

Or is it that these Christians seize on life because it is the last big unknown in science that they, not being scientists, can grasp, i.e. they see it as the last bastion of the God of the Gaps? In other words, do they see it as the last thing science doesn't know and where they fervently hope it will fail, thus leaving an opening to argue that science itself provides evidence for supernatural intervention in nature?

Or is it something else?

I really would like to know what it is since, as someone both brought up a Catholic and having studied physical science, I have no idea why this hangup should exist in parts of Protestant Christianity.

 

[Brian2]

No, I'm not slogging through a James Tour video on the off chance it's the same one. I've posted the links. If you are interested, you can go through them and find out. The lies I identified are described in those links.

I repeat, Tour is just a synthetic chemist. He has no expertise in biochemistry, let alone the chemistry studied by people researching abiogenesis. He is just using his status as a chemist to impress uninformed people and generate rhetorical talking points for creationists to use with one another and with other uninformed people. However as someone with chemistry training myself, I am not bamboozled by his spiel.

All he offers is the usual Argument from Personal Incredulity, which is not a scientific argument. He is entitled to express a personal opinion but he should not be allowed to get away with pretending that he speaks with scientific authority when he does so.

But one thing you say intrigues me. I note you say that "for a bible believer, the origin of life is not just chemistry and is given by God". Why do you single out life, as opposed say to the formation of the Earth, or the Solar System, both of which are also (allegorically) described in the bible?

I single out bringing the universe into being and giving life. The earth is part of the universe and that is shown in Genesis 1 imo when it says that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and then goes on to say what was happening on the earth.
This was part of day 1 and could have been billions of years.
As for James Tour, he seems to have experience and knowledge of what it takes to synthesise molecules and he uses that knowledge in criticising the hand waving of abiogenesis about it and so concludes that the hand waving does not correspond with anything that would be a real situation.

 

[Brian2]

You seem to think that if empirical evidence isn't available, we should believe with less. You are not alone. Several argue that if something can't be demonstrated to be correct empirically, that one needs to find other criteria for belief. But that defeats the purpose of the method, which is to identify and weed out ideas that shouldn't be believed.

The method really was to weed out untrue beliefs in science.
To say that science has weeded out God as an idea that should not be believed, that is not something you have critically thought about imo, God being outside the things that science is capable of weeding out.
So belief without verifiable evidence is the only way to go and is the way given in the Bible.
It is not without it's evidence, just not verifiable evidence.

You are correct that most of us are no longer looking for that evidence. As you just said, you don't have evidence, and I doubt that there are many skeptics who expect evidence from believers. The believer should understand the skeptic not as asking, "Where is your evidence?" which he knows won't be forthcoming, but rather, saying that "You don't have the evidence I need before believing."

I understand that skeptics are not really asking for the evidence that they say is the only rational evidence to have in order to believe something.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

To say that science has weeded out God as an idea that should not be believed, that is not something you have critically thought about imo

That's not what was written, which was that critical thought - not science - identifies ideas fit for belief from the rest. Science isn't addressing the matter of the existence or nonexistence of gods, just the matter of how reality operates, and really, what else matters? It's doing that without invoking gods because gods simply aren't needed in any scientific law or theory, and science is uninterested in the creative speculations regarding objects, processes, and spaces that are said to exist, but which don't manifest empirically and are thus beyond empirical inquiry. If such a thing can be said to exist, it can also be said that its existence is irrelevant to our reality, since it is not a part of it and cannot affect it.

belief without verifiable evidence is the only way to go and is the way given in the Bible.
It is not without it's evidence, just not verifiable evidence.

That doesn't make sense. Evidence isn't verified. It's observed and interpreted. Those conclusions are what are either sound or not, that is, the conclusions can be verified by examining the argument connecting that evidence to those conclusions. To say that one has evidence for something but that that evidence is not verifiable is to say nothing about either the evidence or the conclusions derived from it.

 

[Valjean]

Of course there is evidence for the supernatural, just not verifiable evidence, like there is no verifiable evidence that the universe and life came about naturally.

But the evidence seems subjective and superficial. Without a foundation of objective, testable facts, subjective evidence is entirely personal and epistemically worthless. It's indistinguishable from the voices heard by schizophrenics and spirit possessions trances of Voodoo priests.

If you think there is no "by chance" in evolution then you don't understand it.

There is chance in reproductive variation and in mutation. After that, natural selection and other mechanisms sort things out by fitness.

 

[Valjean]

If it could be shown scientifically that someone designed the universe or things in it then that would be proof of God.

No, it would be evidence of a cause. The cause need not be a conscious personage.

The believers who looks at stuff like the eye and flagellum motor etc etc etc (and there are many complex things) has to go down the path of incredulity to say it happened without a designer/maker.

No! The evidence supports an unguided, unintentional, automatic process. Just look at the mechanism, there's no "design" involved.

So that leaves the way open for atheists to say that irreducible complexity has been debunked,,,,,,,,,,, but really that is not true as evidence for God, it is just true as a subject for scientific acceptance.

Huh? Show your work, please.

As you say, the path is always left open for science to say how it thinks something evolved naturally.
But when we look at that, all it can ever be is educated guesses

No. The entire hypothesis is based on tangible, empirical evidence.

So it ends up in reality being scientific educated guesses versus believer's faith and incredulity.

No, as has been explained countless times, science is not educated guesswork. You're either being disingenuous or obtuse.

In science the naturalistic way, the educated guesses, win because science cannot test for or find spirits or God in any verifiable way.

Can the believers?

But also science cannot verify that any path they say was followed for the evolution of eyes or flagellum motor etc is true.

Have you actually reviewed the evidence? Do you understand why science accepts these mechanisms?

So really it only sounds as if the naturalistic path has won over faith when in fact they both require some degree of faith.

One is evidence-based and tested. The other, by definition, is emotional and unevidenced.

Those who believe what science says (guesses) has to have faith (in the face of no verification) that the natural way is correct and that science has found the best of the naturalistic paths.

Please stop. This has all been explained to you many times. You have no real interest in truth. You cling to your unfounded faith no matter what.

 

[Valjean]

It is not known that evolution can work without supernatural input.
That is just the assumption, as in "evolution is true and so every aspect of it has worked without supernatural input".

But there is no reason it cannot operate entirely without supernatural support, and there is no evidence of such support. Your skepticism is based on religious bias.

 

[Valjean]

I was, in context, saying that as a Christian I find a lot of evolution to be assumed rather than proven so in relation to what I believe about evolution, I might draw the line in places that other Christians may not. They may accept everything that science says about evolution and what probably happened.
Much of what scientists say about what happened is unverified and just presumed to be probably true because all of evolution is true for them.
And then there are those who draw the line elsewhere and reject evolution altogether.

"...as a Christian?" What does that mean? -- that all information is filtered through a doctrinal screen? This smacks of confirmation bias.

Where is the actual, objective evidence? Science, or Christian doctrine?

 

[Valjean]

It is true that the supernatural does not lend itself to testable theories so why are testable theories demanded by atheists, and without them it is irrational to even claim to have evidence?

If the claim of evidence is unfounded, the whole argument falls apart.

 

[Valjean]

Yes I know that Christians like me break the rules of logic but that is fine, that does not mean we are wrong.

True -- but it does mean that you are irrational, and that your conclusions can be dismissed out-of-hand.

 

[Valjean]

I don't believe something because it hasn't been shown not to exist.
I do believe a designer/maker is responsible for the universe however (whether you want to call Him a celestial octopus is up to you) and that He has not been shown not to exist.
If He had been shown not to exist then I would not believe in Him.
Interestingly many atheists seem to use lack of scientific evidence as evidence that God does not exist.

He does not need to be shown not to exist. The burden is on the claimant. All that is logically needed to dismiss a proposal is lack of evidence.
There is poor objective evidence for God, unicorns, gryphons and Poseidon, yet you do not consider them epistemically equal.
Why?

 

[Valjean]

Sy Garte's opinions are supported, as are James Tour's.

They are not. They are deeply flawed.

What does it matter if my views are unsupported?

If they're unsupported they are irrational, and should not be believed.

Should I spend many hours making sure my views are supported so that you can still call those views wrong?

If they are supported, why would we call them wrong?

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

"...as a Christian?" What does that mean?

It means to claim the God-given right to insist that a bit of millennia-old text of unproved (and likely unprovable) provenance justifies the uninformed nitpicking of science.

 

[Valjean]

Uninformed nitpicking?
I think this needs some clarification.

 

[exchemist]

I single out bringing the universe into being and giving life. The earth is part of the universe and that is shown in Genesis 1 imo when it says that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and then goes on to say what was happening on the earth.
This was part of day 1 and could have been billions of years.
As for James Tour, he seems to have experience and knowledge of what it takes to synthesise molecules and he uses that knowledge in criticising the hand waving of abiogenesis about it and so concludes that the hand waving does not correspond with anything that would be a real situation.

But my question is why you single out life as something distinct from bringing the universe into being. If you accept- as you apparently do - the scientific account of the evolution of the cosmos and the formation of the solar system, what is the objection to life having arisen naturally, just as the galaxies and the solar system have done?

 

[Subduction Zone]

Sounds easy. I wonder what all the abiogenesis people are doing if you have it all figured out.

Even that is rather complicated. The problem is the dishonest creationists. They need to lie so that their claims sound reasonable. Look at James Tour. In one of his dogmatic spiels against abiogenesis he brought up mitochondria as supposed evidence against abiogenesis. That is not abiogenesis, that is evolution. Eukaryotes first arose about a billion years after life began. It is amazing that he did not know that. And if he did he was flat out lying.

 

[Brian2]

Please, don't accuse others of your sins. There is nothing wrong with reasoned debate, but you don't do that. You use fake "experts", like James Tour, and then use irrational arguments.

Tour is an expert in his area of expertise. He is not an expert in abiogenesis. He cannot reason rationally and tends to foam at the mouth when shown to be wrong. You swallowed his lies and distortions without questioning them one bit.

You have your experts like Dave Farina whose gushes with bias and misconstrues what James Tour says and throws in his own ad hominen comments about Tour and any of his comments about science or faith.
James tour is an expert in his field and also knows how close abiogenesis is to producing life and is just telling that to the world even if his own style is not diplomatic and he has some things to learn about how to be more diplomatic.

One question. Did you see how when arguing against abiogenesis that he brought up how complex the cell was and mentioned mitochondria and other structures?

You would have to point out the time mark of those comments so I could comment on them.