What's the lamest defence of Theism you've ever heard?

[LadyForCamus]

Oh boy, AAA and ID again...guess I'd better settle in and buckle up...

[abaris]

Therefore it is based on what we DO know that we conclude it to be designed, not what we don't. And I'm not overly concerned with peer review.

WE most certainly don't conclude it to be designed. You do.

And not being overly concerned with peer review is on the same lines as not putting a new product to the test before it hits the market. It's dangerous, a botch job and certainly not the scientific approach.

[J a c k]

Actually, Junk Status, in order for you to be able to claim that you'd have to show us evidence. But you cannot do that, because you've got none.

Checkmate creatard.

Sequential information in cells and molecular mediums that allow information to be transferred between molecules seem like designed features. It can easily be interpreted as evidence of design, especially when we see intelligently created technologies that resemble it, yet we never see non-living systems mimic it.

I couldn't remember why I stopped debating about a year ago. Now I remember. This is painful.  
Here's how this sounds: This thingy right here works wonderfully in a complex manner that I don't understand. Since I don't understand it, I say god did it.

Some other person comes around and you tell her of your findings. She just heard of another god, and thinks it must be that other one. Now we have two possible responsible parties.

Some other dude comes along and asks what the hell is going on. You explain that this thingy is very mechanical and couldn't possible happen if it weren't for a god. This dude heard of yet another god, and it most certainly had to be that god the one that did it.

That's how this sounds. And this discussion has been going on between atheists and creationists for a very long time. I don't understand how creationists can continue to use the unexplained as evidence. I really don't understand. "This is complex, therefore god," is not evidence. How is this still a thing? :huh: :huh: :huh:

[AAA]

Sequential information in cells and molecular mediums that allow information to be transferred between molecules seem like designed features. It can easily be interpreted as evidence of design, especially when we see intelligently created technologies that resemble it, yet we never see non-living systems mimic it.

I couldn't remember why I stopped debating about a year ago. Now I remember. This is painful.  
Here's how this sounds: This thingy right here works wonderfully in a complex manner that I don't understand. Since I don't understand it, I say god did it.

Some other person comes around and you tell her of your findings. She just heard of another god, and thinks it must be that other one. Now we have two possible responsible parties.

Some other dude comes along and asks what the hell is going on. You explain that this thingy is very mechanical and couldn't possible happen if it weren't for a god. This dude heard of yet another god, and it most certainly had to be that god the one that did it.

That's how this sounds. And this discussion has been going on between atheists and creationists for a very long time. I don't understand how creationists can continue to use the unexplained as evidence. I really don't understand. "This is complex, therefore god," is not evidence. How is this still a thing?

For the 6516516519851654196519861698th time, it is not "It is too complex to understand, therefore God", it is "we do understand it well. It is unbelievably efficient, intricate, complex, and dependent on preexisting information. Only the explanation of designer has the ability to explain it so far." It is not based on what we don't know, it is what we DO know.

[J a c k]

For the 6516516519851654196519861698th time, it is not "It is too complex to understand, therefore God", it is "we do understand it well. It is unbelievably efficient, intricate, complex, and dependent on preexisting information. Only the explanation of designer has the ability to explain it so far." It is not based on what we don't know, it is what we DO know.

Do you also claim to know which god did it? I'm curious. I'm new here and don't know you.

[robvalue]

I'd just like to point out for those keeping score at home that there is not yet any scientific theory about multiverses (unless I'm very much out of the loop). It is unfortunate that it has been popularly coined "multiverse theory", whereas it's actually still a hypothesis.

It's certainly not "ours", whatever that is supposed to mean. Atheists aren't a hive mind. Personally I have no opinion about multiverses.

Still, language is important. If we're talking about a "single universe" and we intend for that universe to be defined as everything that exists, then God cannot have created it. If he exists, he is part of the universe, along with whatever reality he existed in at the time (or haunted, or whatever it is he does). Unless it's being proposed he created himself along with everything else, he can't have created "the universe". This is why I prefer to call this "our reality". It is consistent that our reality was caused/created by something from another reality. But then trying to claim this is creating "everything" is an equivocation fallacy.

I expect it will be "God is outside of space and time" next. If he doesn't have his own version of time, he can't act. If he doesn't/didn't have his own version of reality in which he existed, distinct from ours, he wasn't real. At a bare minimum, he himself was that reality.

[God of Mr. Hanky]

The existence of you in a similar, but not unlikely earth is far more unlikely. By all mathematical reasoning, you shouldn't exist, and at this point in your time and place there would be someone (or thing) entirely different. With or without your imagineered god, the unlikely happens, again and again. It's just really awesome what unlikely conditions, materials, and plenty of time can achieve!

It's not the same thing. Improbable events happen all the time, but the question is, if only one or few of these improbable events lead to the desired affect, then how likely is it that the affect in question will spontaneously be achieved? For example. What if you were the only viable version of a human. You could have infinite tries to try to get a human like you, but the fact is that it won't happen again because there aren't enough probabalistic resources.

You clearly haven't read two words on how natural selection works. Go get yourself educated, and then maybe you can decide what is or isn't possible.

[robvalue]

I'm really not sure what AAA even believes. Does he think stuff evolved up until a certain point and then God reached down and gave some primates a nudge to tip them over into humanoids?

Or is it that we didn't evolve at all and we were magically created fully formed?

Evolution happens, that should only be in dispute by people who deny reality. Attributes of offspring are partly determined by the attributes of their parents, after some variation. Does anyone seriously dispute that?

It's only the theory of evolution, what we evolved from and how that thing got here that should be the subject of any debate. I don't know how you'd even test the notion that we were made by magic fully formed, and the fossils of gradually changing humanoids contradict it totally.

Also, we weren't the "goal". We are what happened. Sure, if you rewind time and assume things could happen differently, probably we wouldn't evolve again in the way we have. But then we wouldn't be here to talk about. Whatever was here instead would be here, able to talk about it or otherwise. It's looking at things entirely backwards. Whatever happens after a massive sequence of iterations is going to be "unlikely" if there is any random element involved. By that argument, nothing can happen randomly without magic.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

1. It's not like life can just form under any conditions as the puddle analogy. You know that, and I'm disappointed that a person who knows biology can make that statement. 
2. ID is based on the evidence of biology. Also how is evolution falsifiable? And no, you again are describing experimental science, which will never be able to describe the past. You should look up about how scientists compare competing hypothesis about the remote past where experiments cannot reach. Not all science is empirical as you would like to believe, but you know that. The tough thing is to make sure that you do not mix the unempirical areas with the empirical. 
3. And yes the similar genome could be interpreted as common ancestry, or it could be interpreted as a designer using a similar framework to make multiple different designs. All computer codes use binary code. Similar programs have more similar codes. They were still designed.

1. I didn't try to suggest life could exist under any conditions. I am saying that you are concluding intent from result, when it may not be so and you know it. "Looks designed" and "is designed" are different things. If the puddle had been just 1mm higher, it would have been a different "image" to someone looking at it. That it happens to resemble Elvis does not mean it was made to look like Elvis. Yes, my example is many orders of magnitude simpler than the phenomena you are describing... yet my analogy holds.

2. One of the several dozen easy ways evolution would be falsifiable is when the PCR was invented in the mid-80s, and then faster scanning equipment and computers began to come out, so that we could sequence a great many species, at least in localized/targeted regions or at medium clarity. The ToE predicts that we will find inherited gene markers from species which descended and diverged from the same gene pool. It made comparisons based on physical factors, such as fossils, bones, and comparative anatomy of living species, and laid out a tree of life of our ancestry. If it had been false, the DNA "trees of inheritance" would not have been able to be constructed, since it would just be a jumble of similar parts, and not clear patterns of inherited marker-sections. When we looked at those heritable markers, the same types used for paternity tests and to identify criminals at crime scenes, we found that we are indeed of the Great Ape family and closely related to chimpanzees despite the many inversions and other modifications of the basic pattern prior to the divergence.

3. As the paper said, we have been changing rather rapidly under evolutionary pressures, as have they. There is no need for these markers to give a false impression of shared gene-pools with similar-looking animal types, unless this Deity of yours is malevolent or the Trickster, Loki. Even Francis Collins of the Human Genome Project went to great lengths to explain why those markers mean we're descended from the same grandparents as chimps, and why they're not just "similar systems". And he's an Evangelical Christian!

[God of Mr. Hanky]

It isn't God of the Gaps I don't know why you can't understand that. It is not that I am saying that God is responsible for every cellular interaction.

Do you believe the near-universal Christian doctrine of a god which is

1. omniscient
   
2. omnipotent
   
3. omnipresent
   
4. anticipates everything which will happen, everywhere in this universe
   
   Yes or No?
   
   If "Yes", then why should your god not be responsible for every single subatomic particle collision and reaction, much less "every cellular reaction"?