Because, even with all the on-going observations, and the experiments with evolution— the LTEE, Drosophila, etc. — which were and are geared toward fast-tracking evolutionary mechanisms, we have observed no significantly new, shall we say, energy-conservation methods established to benefit the entire organism. Where they have gained fitness in one area, the same organism lost fitness in another.
These evo. mechanisms can only influence an organism’s current genetic content, not build new genes. Any evidence to the contrary?
Now, I see where organisms, due to these changes, have given rise to new species, but they will stay within their respective Family(?) / Order(?) taxa.
I think the currently observed evidence suggests that the limit of phenotypic diversity is capped at the Family (maybe Order) level, and will always stay within those set parameters. Ie., birds will never “gradually” replace feathers with hair.
I wrote, "You probably mean that the first of these mindless machines - the first cells - could not have assembled themselves."
"but if so, what's your reason for concluding that? There seem to be only two logical possibilities: intelligent design for the first life in the universe (or the first life on earth if you prefer) or blind, naturalistic mechanisms. How did you rule one of those in and the other out? It seems like a hunch or intuition"
I don't see an answer to my question there? How did you rule out naturalistic abiogenesis, the alternative to creationism. Why don't you consider both logically possible and neither ruled in or out?
First of all, I think it’s one Creator. Because all living things exhibit the same building blocks: all are carbon-based, and all have the same DNA structure, with the same 4 nucleotides.
(You see, this evidence that science uses to claim common ancestry, ie., life’s structural similarities, is the same evidence to support there being one Creator.)
Second, science has discovered how something can exist eternally: energy, which can change from one form to another.
And when we’ve discovered all forms of energy & their properties, we can discuss God’s existence further.
I wrote, "If I invoke an intelligent designer to explain why cells exist because I see them as too complex to exist undesigned, then I have to apply the same thinking to it. How did it come to exist? Presumably, such an entity is even more complex than a cell. This just makes my explanation more complex, not less, and provides an answer for why cells exist, but not for why gods exist"
I don't see your explanation for why a god exists. If you say that you don't need one, then why assert that nature needs help to exist or generate living cells?
These first two issues illustrate two common creationist logical errors. There are no good answers for ether of my questions to you. There is no basis for ruling out abiogenesis nor alleging that nature needs an intelligent designer to exist but that that intelligent designer doesn't. They're both informal fallacies, the first non sequitur (you've gone one step too many in your analysis by concluding an intelligent designer. You've taken a leap of faith, which breaks the chain of reasoning, after which no other conclusion is sound.
And the second is special pleading, or unjustified double standard. Double standards can be justified, as when adults are allowed to drive but not minors, or unjustified, as when men are allowed to drive but not women. You've separate standards for nature and the god you say created it. You say that nature and cells need an intelligent creator, but an intelligent creator doesn't need any source.
I understand why you do that. That's how the theology you've been taught is presented. It's how it was presented to me decades ago, and I didn't question it then, either.
But I've progressed in my education and critical thinking skills since then, and now I see the problem with that idea. I'm trying to show it to you. I don't expect you to change your opinions, nor would I want you to do that at this stage in your life.
But maybe you can understand the argument and why a critical thinker would reject the special pleading involved in requiring of nature what you don't require of your god and giving no reason for that.
Other apologists will say things such as the rules of reason don't apply to gods, but that's also special pleading.
Speaking of “forms of energy”, apparently unknown at this time, what do you make of certain individuals on here, that detail their interactions with invisible spirit entities? Do you just dismiss it?
Not entirely. One poster,
@Sgt. Pepper , seems intelligent, honest, and sincere, but I don't accept that she is correct. Neither do I dismiss her claims. I'm agnostic regarding them.
And even if she is correct, I don't see the relevance in my life. I'm fine with the possibility that spirits exist, and I don't know that.
There are also religious science believers, who, despite the mountain of evidence, accept science as an infallible sort of deity.
The critically thinking empiricist has no need for religion or deities. What most of us say about science and empiricism in general is that it is the only known path to knowledge, knowledge being the collection of demonstrably correct ideas that can be used to predict outcomes successfully, not that it can answer all questions. We also say that religion and belief by faith answers no questions, so, even though science cannot answer everything, what it cannot answer cannot be answered. Unfalsifiable claims about gods and magic aren't meaningful answers, and we can't use false or unfalsifiable ones.
It never occurs to them that, like everything in the world, science is corrupted by money and politics.
Disagree. Some scientists might be, and certainly many outside of science using science are corruptly, but the enterprise of science is pure.
Your religion has done you a disservice teaching you those things in defense of its unscientific dicta contradicted by science. They're happy to deceive you if it serves them. Some might consider that selfish and immoral.
In the meantime, ...
"You stare into your high-definition plasma screen monitor, type into your cordless keyboard then hit enter, which causes your computer to convert all that visual data into a binary signal that's processed by millions of precise circuits. This is then converted to a frequency modulated signal to reach your wireless router where it is then converted to light waves and sent along a large fiber optics cable to be processed by a supercomputer on a mass server. This sends that bit you typed to a satellite orbiting the earth that was put there through the greatest feats of engineering and science, all so it could go back through a similar pathway to make it all the way here to my computer monitor 15,000 miles away from you just so you could say, "Science is all a bunch of manmade hogwash."- anon.
