Is atheism a scientific perspective?

[Edwardo Piet]

So let me get this straight. You think that near infinite complexity will arise given a replicating system, time, and environmental pressure?

So let me get this straight. You think valid logic will arise if you simply make a fallacious argument from personal incredulity? Think again.

[Tonus]

Well I disagree that there is not evidence. Do you agree that nature exhibits evidence of design at least?

On the surface, yes. As we dig deeper we can see how natural things developed in natural ways. We can also see inefficiencies in the way much of nature is 'designed.' It's great that we have a gas giant (Jupiter) that protects us from a rain of dangerous objects that are hurtling through space so that only some of them hit us. An intelligent designer would've figured out a way to avoid such planet-threatening bombardments from occurring in the first place.

[Mermaid]

Life evolved.

That's just an assertion.

No. It's a reproducible fact.

[AAA]

Despite a thorough search, highly irregular specified information only has one known cause: intelligence. 

This is an unsupported claim. This is what I'm asking evidence for. Are you a presuppositionist or something?

You wouldn't tell me what type of evidence you would consider evidence of design, so I just started here.

ANY evidence. You've given me none for the above claim.

I didn't realize that is what you wanted evidence for. 

The alternatives to intelligence are random chance association of nucleotides and chemical necessity. We could actually do a calculation to show how unlikely a protein forming by random chance in a sea of amino acids is if you want.

Chemical necessity does not seem to be an adequate cause either. There is no known process leading nucleotides to arrange themselves into biologically functional sequences. The different bases attached to the sugar-phosphate backbone do not attract each other at different strengths. If they did, this would destroy the ability to convey information, because the resulting sequence would begin to become repetitive. Once again, I recommend Signature in the Cell if you want a more elaborate description of the other causes that have been put forward over the years.

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That's just an assertion.

No. It's a reproducible fact.

Actually it isn't. Evolution relies on chance events from the remote past. There is no way to replicate what happened. Sure we see mutations happening all the time, but it is extremely speculative to say that there were specific mutations that happened in the past that led to the DNA sequence we see today.

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Well I disagree that there is not evidence. Do you agree that nature exhibits evidence of design at least?

On the surface, yes.  As we dig deeper we can see how natural things developed in natural ways.  We can also see inefficiencies in the way much of nature is 'designed.'  It's great that we have a gas giant (Jupiter) that protects us from a rain of dangerous objects that are hurtling through space so that only some of them hit us.  An intelligent designer would've figured out a way to avoid such planet-threatening bombardments from occurring in the first place.

See, that is a logical fallacy. That's like saying it's great that my laptop has an internal fan to cool it down, but a designer would have figured out a way to prevent it from getting hot in the first place.

[Astreja]

Evolution relies on chance events from the remote past.

Not entirely accurate.  Evolution is not like shuffling a deck of playing cards or rolling dice.  It's more like a comparison sort wherein the results of each generation affects the degree of randomness in the next one, with failures falling away over time.

As the Miller-Urey experiment demonstrated in the 1950s, it is possible for complex organic molecules to form in a relatively short time.  Now extend that process over billions of years, with a bias towards complex structures gradually forming.

I fully expect to see DNA synthesis in a laboratory setting in this lifetime, sooner rather than later.

[Mermaid]

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No. It's a reproducible fact.

Actually it isn't. Evolution relies on chance events from the remote past. There is no way to replicate what happened. Sure we see mutations happening all the time, but it is extremely speculative to say that there were specific mutations that happened in the past that led to the DNA sequence we see today.

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Yes, yes it is. The theory is reproducible, scientific fact.
A specific example: Add an antibiotic to a bacterial culture, and they will quickly develop resistance to the drug. Over and over and over.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plVk4NVIUh8

[Edwardo Piet]

Only people who don't understand evolution say it relies on chance.

[Jesster]

This is an unsupported claim. This is what I'm asking evidence for. Are you a presuppositionist or something?

ANY evidence. You've given me none for the above claim.

I didn't realize that is what you wanted evidence for. 

The alternatives to intelligence are random chance association of nucleotides and chemical necessity. We could actually do a calculation to show how unlikely a protein forming by random chance in a sea of amino acids is if you want.

Chemical necessity does not seem to be an adequate cause either. There is no known process leading nucleotides to arrange themselves into biologically functional sequences. The different bases attached to the sugar-phosphate backbone do not attract each other at different strengths. If they did, this would destroy the ability to convey information, because the resulting sequence would begin to become repetitive. Once again, I recommend Signature in the Cell if you want a more elaborate description of the other causes that have been put forward over the years.

So your evidence for your claim is that you don't like alternative claims? Have you heard of the argument from incredulity fallacy? Are you going to give evidence for your claim, or are you just going to try to beat up on other ideas? If you are just going to duck and dodge, I am not going to waste any more time on you.

[AAA]

Evolution relies on chance events from the remote past.

Not entirely accurate.  Evolution is not like shuffling a deck of playing cards or rolling dice.  It's more like a comparison sort wherein the results of each generation affects the degree of randomness in the next one, with failures falling away over time.

As the Miller-Urey experiment demonstrated in the 1950s, it is possible for complex organic molecules to form in a relatively short time.  Now extend that process over billions of years, with a bias towards complex structures gradually forming.

I fully expect to see DNA synthesis in a laboratory setting in this lifetime, sooner rather than later.

Random mutation is proclaimed to be the engine that drives new genetic information. It has also happened in the remote past, so I think that sentence was accurate.

The Miller-Urey experiment is rarely discussed in origin of life literature anymore because they used conditions that are now believed to not be accurate of the early earth. And yes, they produced a few amino acids, but once again this is far from the nucleotide based code of life. And the breaking of both peptide bonds and phosphodiester bonds (protein chain and DNA chain bonds, respectively) is energetically favorable, so I don't know that any sort of accumulation of these molecules would have happened. 

We already see DNA and RNA synthesis all the time in laboratories. In fact, they often produce artificial guide RNAs to direct CRISPR-CAS9 proteins to edit DNA sequence when they are genetically modifying organisms. The problem is when they try to do it without inputting information or intentionally directing which sequences should form.

[Tonus]

See, that is a logical fallacy. That's like saying it's great that my laptop has an internal fan to cool it down, but a designer would have figured out a way to prevent it from getting hot in the first place.

We're not talking about cooling down a component in a computer, I'm talking about a 'design' that has lead to the near-extinction of all life on the planet in the past and threatens to do so again. The human who designs a microprocessor is limited by his knowledge and resources and the laws of nature. A God who builds a universe is limited in no such ways. If his designs are inefficient or dangerous, then they are that way by design. If my expectations for God are no greater than they are for a human engineer then God either faces the same limitations, is a monumentally inept engineer, or is designing things that way on purpose, which would be terrifying if true.