The Problem with Christians

[LadyForCamus]

Evolution not scientific? Someone must know next to nothing about it if they could possibly think that.

But pointing at life and saying "that looks designed" is science? Jeez. I give up. I'd already given up, but I give up again.

Lol, I know, why do we keep getting sucked back in?!

[RoadRunner79]

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 When I first believed, I did not understand science at all, so requiring "scientific evidence" to believe in a designer was not relevant at the time. If I wish to make an argument now for the existence of God, I may choose to use science but it isn't a requirement for faith. For some, it's as simple as staring at the stars and finding faith as a natural consequence.

There are other personal experiences that have led me to believe in God, none of which are scientifically provable, especially since they are past events that cannot be reproduced under laboratory conditions. These alone would be sufficient to cause me to believe, without any science being involved.

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So, there it is.  You would believe in god for all of your "feely," non-scientific reasons, no matter WHAT science has to say about complex life or the universe.  So, please stop with the "I believe in a designer because of science" act, as clearly science is arbitrary to you here.   You're only latch onto it where you think it somehow enhances your biased conclusion (which it does not).

It seems to me, that what you said here is manipulating the original statement for your own benefit.

[RoadRunner79]

Evolution not scientific? Someone must know next to nothing about it if they could possibly think that.

But pointing at life and saying "that looks designed" is science? Jeez. I give up. I'd already given up, but I give up again.

Your right...it far worse than "that looks similar, they must have common descent"....

[LadyForCamus]

In other words...how do you, in your mind, reconcile requiring scientific evidence to believe in your designer, but NOT require it at any point after accepting that belief?  Let me ask you this:  if you couldn't make a scientific case in your own mind for a designer, would you believe in Him anyway?

It is much easier to reach the conclusion that something was designed than to determine the identity of the designer. They are two very different questions and require different approaches. Nobody has come up with a scientific way to identify the designer from a designed system, so I can't require it. But we can look at other evidence that isn't as solid as typical science. 

For example. If I was trying to determine the identity of the designer of my car, I can use other clues to reach a reasonable conclusion. The year of my car helps me gain a possible age range for the designer. The country it was built in helps me gain a general location where the designer may have lived. You can eventually assemble clues to get a picture. They aren't as solid as the science that would be ideal, but they are still useful.

And no I would not to answer the last question.

You mean it's easier to use science (or your bizarre, twisted understanding of it IMO...) to reach the conclusion of a designer, than it is to determine its identity. So for you, rigorous science is required to accept the conclusion of a designer, but NOT required to accept his identity, history, or attributes. Cognitive. Dissonance.

A really smart (and dashingly handsome) dude here once said in a video: "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

I'd say the claim of a creator/designer is pretty extraordinary. AAA, you admit that you require what you consider to be scientific evidence in order to accept such a claim yourself, so I think it's safe to say you'd agree with me here.

Now...definitions of this creator's identity, disposition, attributes, behaviors, and history are exponentially MORE detailed; MORE complicated, and are therefore more extraordinary than simply the claim that he exists. It follows that the evidence required to accept such claims should be at LEAST as rigorous as what was used to determine he exists in the first place. Things like testimonials, and personal revelation should not even be on your radar for claims like the three O's of God. I mean...what am I missing here?!

[Esquilax]

Christianity is not science.  At the end of the day it is a matter of faith and reason. My reason to believe is multifaceted but I regard the Scripture as being accurate because of its ability to reliably predict the future.

So, if predictions are sufficient to believe in a thing, would you not then have to agree that the predictions that evolution makes- which unlike your scriptural ones are not simple post hoc rationalizations made to retrofit the text to modern events, but actual predictions made before and unambiguously about a given event- that have all been proven true, are sufficient evidence to accept evolution?

I mean, if you want a prediction coming true, Tiktaalik is about as perfect an example as you'll ever get. So why is it that the vague bible prophecies, that have to be self-servingly "interpreted" by religious figures to match, and which give you no evidence at all for the cause of those predictions, are sufficient for you to believe in god, but an actual scientist that you can talk to right now making a specific prediction about what sorts of organisms they might find in a specific place in the fossil record if evolution were true, and then that same scientist going out and finding exactly that creature at exactly that place is not sufficient to accept evolution? Are predictions good enough or not?

Concerning evolution, I don't regard it as being scientific. If you called it a faith, that would make more sense to me. One thing I would like to know is, what are the stages of the evolution of humans? Apart from neanderthals, what was the progenitor to humans? And what was the progenitor to that?

I'll give you a tip: if you're going to ask a question, look it up on Google before you ask it, especially if you're phrasing it as a sort of gotcha question that you think doesn't have an answer, because if it turns out that there is an answer, then all your confidence is going to look as though it was borne of ignorance, rather than intellectual rigor. In this case it's particularly embarrassing because your question suggests that you think Neanderthal is the only progenitor species we know of, which hasn't been true for at least fifty years: we actually have a pretty clear ancestral record, for humans. In fact, we can chart the development of the Homo genus from the great apes, all the way back to the basal primate species some 65 million years ago, and we did this through observation, repeatable testing, and examination of the evidence.

You know, all the best practices of science.

[LadyForCamus]

Evolution not scientific? Someone must know next to nothing about it if they could possibly think that.

But pointing at life and saying "that looks designed" is science? Jeez. I give up. I'd already given up, but I give up again.

Your right...it far worse than "that looks similar, they must have common descent"....

LMAO! Yeah...that's exactly how scientists constructed the theory of evolution. Hell, I could have done THAT! :: face palm ::

[robvalue]

Jesus fucking Christ on a stick.

I think my brain is devolving into plankton, I need to stop looking at this thread!

[Esquilax]

Evolution not scientific? Someone must know next to nothing about it if they could possibly think that.

But pointing at life and saying "that looks designed" is science? Jeez. I give up. I'd already given up, but I give up again.

Your right...it far worse than "that looks similar, they must have common descent"....

Oh wow, a strawman. How crazy.

It's a demonstrable fact that the closer organisms are morphologically, the closer they tend to be genetically. The correlation between genetic similarity and familial relationships is also well known and borne out by all the scientific data. So in fact, physiological similarities are a reliable indicator of descent, but in this case we also pair them with genetic analysis and close examination of morphology, so even if we only had looks to go off of, it'd still be a more detailed explanation than your glib, one sentence response. It's not, though: we also have the precise ordering of the fossil record, the similar basal genetics that all organisms share, and a raft of other scientific observations that are not shared in the overly simplistic, fallacious reasoning deployed in this thread in support of the design bald assertion.

[LadyForCamus]

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So, there it is.  You would believe in god for all of your "feely," non-scientific reasons, no matter WHAT science has to say about complex life or the universe.  So, please stop with the "I believe in a designer because of science" act, as clearly science is arbitrary to you here.   You're only latch onto it where you think it somehow enhances your biased conclusion (which it does not).

It seems to me, that what you said here is manipulating the original statement for your own benefit.

In what way have I done that?

[RoadRunner79]

Your right...it far worse than "that looks similar, they must have common descent"....

LMAO!  Yeah...that's exactly how scientists constructed the theory of evolution.  Hell, I could have done THAT!  :: face palm ::

It analogous to what was given for the opposing view given (it seems that you don't want a fair playing field).... And if you don't think that common descent evolution is based largely on genetic and structural similarities, then I suggest you do some reading.