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Right and Wrong Reasons for being (A)theist

Hawkins

Well-Known Member
This is not clear. The evidence out there clearly tells us that the diversity of life is due to evolution. If that is not the case then God would have had to have planted the evidence, making him a liar.

You don't seem to understand what science is.

Science is about the prediction of an end-to-end repetition. Science is accurate because it's always about something which can repeat infinitive number of times for humans to observe and most importantly to predict how it repeats to draw a conclusion. The methodology ToE employed is completely different from any other science. This is so simply because it takes millions of years for an end-to-end evolution to possibly repeat itself. We don't have that time to observe and predict how it repeats to draw any scientific conclusion.

If you implicitly claim that a human can be evolved from in the end a single cell organism, then you have to make the single-cell to human process repeats itself infinitive number of times for humans to do enough observations, and most importantly predictions on how this repeats in order to draw a scientific conclusion. That's how each and every single science works.

This is so because humans are creatures of the present. We don't have the capability to reach the past, and we don't have the capability to reach the future. It is because we have no capability to reach the future that if we can correctly and repeatedly predict how a phenomenon repeats itself into the future, we know that we hit a truth in terms of how we make use of a "theory" to predict the repetition. This is the nature of science and why it is accurate. In a nutshell, science is the making use of predictions repeatedly to identify a truth (which can repeat). ToE is a valid hypothesis in suggesting that evolution (from single cell to fully grown) can be a repeating process (of natural selection). However it's not up to the scientific accuracy as long as you can't make it repeat itself (to the extent of infinitive number of times) for the prediction of its repetition to be made correctly and repeatedly.

That said, to me the theory of common ancestry is a joke in concluding that everyone has an invisible common ancestor without knowing who it is. In terms of how things work, the genes are so if you would like that animal to have its appearance and behavior. If you want a chimp to have its current appearance and behavior, you need the genes to be so disregarding whether the genes share anything in common with that of humans. Everything else can be anything, not necessarily be a result of evolution. It can be a result of interbreeding or a mixture of interbreeding and adaptation. The difference between adaption and evolution is that species can be selected by the nature, however this may not be the way how they are brought to their current state from a single cell.

An analogy is that whenever you see someone in uniform sitting in the cockpit of a plane, you draw the conclusion that he's a pilot. This can be true however it's a pure speculation. He's a pilot when he launches and lands a plane from one airport to another repeatedly as we predict. Then he's a pilot. This what science is and how it makes a difference from the pure speculation. Similarly, when you see how nature changes a species to draw the conclusion that nature can drive a single cell to that species, it's a pure speculation. If you can predict repeatedly how a single cell turns into that species without error, only then you have a science!
 

Thermos aquaticus

Well-Known Member
Debunking depends upon perspective.
While scientifically debunked, we're talking about a supreme
being who can do things which supersede the laws of science.

That's like saying we should ignore fingerprint and DNA evidence because God could have planted those things at the crime scene.
 

Hawkins

Well-Known Member
the problem is that creationists will also claim that God cannot lie. Assuming that God cannot or will not lie the creation myths of the Bible are debunked.

They can never be debunked. First humans can never define what time is. In human science, time is never a stable physics unit. In science time is more like a delusional ghost.

"Debunk" on the other hand, is under the assumption that humans know what time is as a physics unit, while we know for sure that humans don't know what time itself is.
 

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
That's like saying we should ignore fingerprint and DNA evidence because God could have planted those things at the crime scene.
Divine intervention on the scale of creating a planet is a vanishingly rare event.
The laws of nature can be depended upon for micro-events like fingerprints.
 

Thermos aquaticus

Well-Known Member
You don't seem to understand what science is.

Science is about the prediction of an end-to-end repetition. Science is accurate because it's always about something which can repeat infinitive number of times for humans to observe and most importantly to predict how it repeats to draw a conclusion. The methodology ToE employed is completely different from any other science. This is so simply because it takes millions of years for an end-to-end evolution to possibly repeat itself. We don't have that time to observe and predict how it repeats to draw any scientific conclusion.

The observations of fossils, living species, and the genomes of living species are all infinitely repeatable, and these are the observations that are used to test the theory of evolution. It is no different than any other theory in science.

You seem to be under the impression that we observe the hypothesis or theory. That isn't the case. Observations and theories are separate things.

If you implicitly claim that a human can be evolved from in the end a single cell organism, then you have to make the single-cell to human process repeats itself infinitive number of times for humans to do enough observations, and most importantly predictions on how this repeats in order to draw a scientific conclusion. That's how each and every single science works.

False. You can test the hypothesis by looking at evidence in the present that was created by events in the past. This is completely within the requirements of the scientific method. Again, life evolving from single celled ancestors is the hypothesis. You don't observe the hypothesis. You test the hypothesis with observations, and the observations in this case are the fossil record, the morphology of living species, and the genomes of living species which are a direct record of their ancestry.

It is because we have no capability to reach the future that if we can correctly and repeatedly predict how a phenomenon repeats itself into the future, we know that we hit a truth in terms of how we make use of a "theory" to predict the repetition.

The theory of evolution predicts that we should see a correlation between phylogenies based on morphology and phylogenies based on DNA sequences, and this prediction repeats and repeats and repeats for every living species, fossil species, and genome we sequence. It predicts the same for genomes yet to be sequenced, living species yet to be discovered, and fossils yet to be discovered.

That said, to me the theory of common ancestry is a joke in concluding that everyone has an invisible common ancestor without knowing who it is.

You don't have to find a bear in order to determine if a bear left tracks across your back yard.

Even now, we use genetic testing to determine if two humans share a common ancestor, such as the Hamilton and . The same techniques are used to establish common ancestry. Genomes are a direct record of ones ancestry.

In terms of how things work, the genes are so if you would like that animal to have its appearance and behavior. If you want a chimp to have its current appearance and behavior, you need the genes to be so disregarding whether the genes share anything in common with that of humans.

That's completely false. For example, you could change almost every third base for each codon and still have the same protein sequence. You could completely redo the codon table for any species by changing the anti-codons on transfer RNAs and the amino acids attached to them. Even then, there is nearly an infinite number of protein and DNA sequences that would produce a chimp. Even the genes that have nothing do with how chimps look (e.g. cytochrome c) are still nearly identical to human DNA.

As an analogy, Google Chrome is a web browser found on both Windows and Apple that look almost identical when they are on the screen. However, the computer code that runs them are very different from one another.

The difference between adaption and evolution is that species can be selected by the nature, however this may not be the way how they are brought to their current state from a single cell.

Evolution and adaptation are exactly the same. Both operate through variation being filtered through selection.

An analogy is that whenever you see someone in uniform sitting in the cockpit of a plane, you draw the conclusion that he's a pilot. This can be true however it's a pure speculation. He's a pilot when he launches and lands a plane from one airport to another repeatedly as we predict. Then he's a pilot. This what science is and how it makes a difference from the pure speculation. Similarly, when you see how nature changes a species to draw the conclusion that nature can drive a single cell to that species, it's a pure speculation. If you can predict repeatedly how a single cell turns into that species without error, only then you have a science!

How is that even analogous?
 

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
You don't seem to understand what science is.

Science is about the prediction of an end-to-end repetition. Science is accurate because it's always about something which can repeat infinitive number of times for humans to observe and most importantly to predict how it repeats to draw a conclusion. The methodology ToE employed is completely different from any other science. This is so simply because it takes millions of years for an end-to-end evolution to possibly repeat itself. We don't have that time to observe and predict how it repeats to draw any scientific conclusion.

Nope. You have that wrong. Science is the process where ideas are tested through experiment and observation. We can test the concept of evolution in many different ways. I don't know where you got this wrong idea of what science is from, but it was probably a creationist source.

If you implicitly claim that a human can be evolved from in the end a single cell organism, then you have to make the single-cell to human process repeats itself infinitive number of times for humans to do enough observations, and most importantly predictions on how this repeats in order to draw a scientific conclusion. That's how each and every single science works.

Wrong again, one only needs to find evidence for it and find tests that could refute the idea if wrong. Again, you have a very flawed concept of what is and is not science.

This is so because humans are creatures of the present. We don't have the capability to reach the past, and we don't have the capability to reach the future. It is because we have no capability to reach the future that if we can correctly and repeatedly predict how a phenomenon repeats itself into the future, we know that we hit a truth in terms of how we make use of a "theory" to predict the repetition. This is the nature of science and why it is accurate. In a nutshell, science is the making use of predictions repeatedly to identify a truth (which can repeat). ToE is a valid hypothesis in suggesting that evolution (from single cell to fully grown) can be a repeating process (of natural selection). However it's not up to the scientific accuracy as long as you can't make it repeat itself (to the extent of infinitive number of times) for the prediction of its repetition to be made correctly and repeatedly.

That said, to me the theory of common ancestry is a joke in concluding that everyone has an invisible common ancestor without knowing who it is. In terms of how things work, the genes are so if you would like that animal to have its appearance and behavior. If you want a chimp to have its current appearance and behavior, you need the genes to be so disregarding whether the genes share anything in common with that of humans. Everything else can be anything, not necessarily be a result of evolution. It can be a result of interbreeding or a mixture of interbreeding and adaptation. The difference between adaption and evolution is that species can be selected by the nature, however this may not be the way how they are brought to their current state from a single cell.

An analogy is that whenever you see someone in uniform sitting in the cockpit of a plane, you draw the conclusion that he's a pilot. This can be true however it's a pure speculation. He's a pilot when he launches and lands a plane from one airport to another repeatedly as we predict. Then he's a pilot. This what science is and how it makes a difference from the pure speculation. Similarly, when you see how nature changes a species to draw the conclusion that nature can drive a single cell to that species, it's a pure speculation. If you can predict repeatedly how a single cell turns into that species without error, only then you have a science!


Too long, didn't read, but it appears to be merely repetition of a flawed understanding of how science is done.

Would you like to discuss the scientific method? I can show you your errors if you care to do so.
 

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
They can never be debunked. First humans can never define what time is. In human science, time is never a stable physics unit. In science time is more like a delusional ghost.

"Debunk" on the other hand, is under the assumption that humans know what time is as a physics unit, while we know for sure that humans don't know what time itself is.
Of course they can be debunked. You may not know how to do so, but that does not mean that others do not. And time is very well defined in physics. What makes you think that it is not well defined?
 

Thermos aquaticus

Well-Known Member
Divine intervention on the scale of creating a planet is a vanishingly rare event.
The laws of nature can be depended upon for micro-events like fingerprints.

Those are all claims without a shred of evidence. All you are doing is invoking magic so you can ignore inconvenient evidence.
 

Thermos aquaticus

Well-Known Member
First humans can never define what time is.

"The second (abbreviation, s or sec) is the Standard International ( SI ) unit of time. One second is the time that elapses during 9,192,631,770 (9.192631770 x 10 ^9 ) cycles of the radiation produced by the transition between two levels of the cesium 133 atom."
What is second (s or sec)? - Definition from WhatIs.com

In human science, time is never a stable physics unit. In science time is more like a delusional ghost.

The theory of relativity states quite clearly that time is the same in all stationary frames of reference, and that theory has passed thousands of experimental tests.
 

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
"Supernatural intervention.
Conflict resolved."--Revoltingest

You are claiming there was supernatural intervention. You are invoking magic and claiming magic will be indistinguishable from natural processes which is a rather weak argument.
I only try to reason as would a believer.
(I'm not one.)
 

Thermos aquaticus

Well-Known Member
I only try to reason as would a believer.

But you understand how that reasoning is flawed, correct?

I can't invoke mischievous leprechauns who leave fingerprints and DNA at crime scenes in order to make forensic evidence disappear, or at least I would never be taken seriously by any jury or court. This is essentially what believers are doing, saying that these things came about through magic but in a way that makes them look exactly like they came about through natural process, and for no good reason.
 

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
But you understand how that reasoning is flawed, correct?
There is no flaw if one believes that divine intervention created
Earth, the universe, & the natural world as it appears to us.
I can't invoke mischievous leprechauns who leave fingerprints and DNA at crime scenes in order to make forensic evidence disappear, or at least I would never be taken seriously by any jury or court. This is essentially what believers are doing, saying that these things came about through magic but in a way that makes them look exactly like they came about through natural process, and for no good reason.
You could invoke those things if you believed
them, & if you found enuf like minded folk.
 

Thermos aquaticus

Well-Known Member
A believer would argue that "God did it" is the simplest explanation.

That's not parsimony. Parsimony is the explanation with the fewest assumptions, not the simplest.

Why should it conform to our beliefs?

Precisely. It doesn't have to. At one time most humans believed the Sun moved about the Earth, and yet in reality it was the Earth moving about the Sun. If we believe really, really hard that the Moon is made of chees it doesn't magically poof into a big ball of cheese. Just because someone believes the universe was poofed into being does not make it real.
 

1213

Well-Known Member
I? It is not a question of "God created" , it is a question of what and how he any goes created. The Adam and Eve story have clearly been debunked. So has the Noah's Ark myth.
Of course there is no reason to believe the myths of the Bible since there is no reliable evidence for them.

I disagree with that. Bible is not debunked and there is lot of reliable evidence for the great flood.
 

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
That's not parsimony. Parsimony is the explanation with the fewest assumptions, not the simplest.
I agree with you.
But it's only one way of seeing things.
Precisely. It doesn't have to. At one time most humans believed the Sun moved about the Earth, and yet in reality it was the Earth moving about the Sun. If we believe really, really hard that the Moon is made of chees it doesn't magically poof into a big ball of cheese. Just because someone believes the universe was poofed into being does not make it real.
When beliefs don't bump directly into reality, there's more leeway in what's possible.
I can't prove many believers wrong. I just have a material perspective, & so I disagree.
 
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