The Problem with Christians

[pocaracas]

Reading isn't the same as literature!

It's not called readerature, is it?

[LadyForCamus]

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?!

I'm still waiting for your take on this, AAA. Any thoughts?

[RoadRunner79]

So what you're telling me is that you're a college student training to be a scientist... who refuses to do basic background research into a cornerstone principle of your field, even when many aspects of biology would not work if evolution were not a real, active phenomena.

I think that there is some equivocating here.... In that what is meant by evolution. Normally what is being contested isn't gradual change over time, but common descent. If I am incorrect in this assumption, then I am curious what do you think wouldn't work in biology without universal common descent evolution?

[RoadRunner79]

Incidentally, can you furnish an example of positive evidence for intelligent design? I'm thinking hard, but I'm drawing a blank.

Positive claims are made, in that complex specified information, and irreducible complexity are indicative of design. This is because these things require a choice and planning. Something which an intelligence is capable of, and which natural forces and chance are not. This can be tested by probability studies and knockout tests.

[RoadRunner79]

 The neo-Darwinian explanation of chance plus natural selection as the mechanism for evolution however, I think that the data is against it.

Oh, do tell.  

We can discuss that later.... I don't want to get too many things going on at once.

[Redbeard The Pink]

And you think it happened by magic. How scientific.


By the way, a 5-second Google search and a glance at Wikipedia yielded a nice little article about the evolution of photosynthesis, complete with citations and everything. Love me some internet.

Why is design magic to you people? Engineers are not magicians. 

And yeah, a 5 second google search can also tell you that the earth is hollow. You can literally find anything on the internet. Also don't assume that all citations represent experiments, go read the primary articles. I guarantee they are highly speculative. That's fine, but don't pretend that it is the same as empirical/experimental science.

God is not an engineer; he is a magician. When he gathers up clay and breathes into man to animate him, that is literally how the "golem spell" is supposed to be performed. Your Bible says that your god used magic to create the Universe.


Some crackpot saying the Earth is hollow and Wikipedia having a properly formatted and cited article are two very different things. Interestingly enough, if you google "hollow earth theory," wikipedia comes up again, briefly describing the concept, its historical proponents, and the ample evidence against it (seismic, gravitational, etc.).


So yeah...the "not everything you see on TV is true" argument doesn't really apply to this. I didn't just dig up the first source that agrees with me, I chose one that was well supported. It's not like I went to Answers in Genesis or anything.


Also, the primary sources seem to mostly involve things we observe in cyanobacteria, algae, sea slugs, and other primitive life forms that haven't changed much in the billions of years the planet has had life on it. That's hardly speculative. We can see these more basic pieces of the evolutionary record still in use today by simple life forms.

[Esquilax]

I think that there is some equivocating here.... In that what is meant by evolution.  Normally  what is being contested isn't gradual change over time, but common descent.  If I am incorrect in this assumption, then I am curious what do you think wouldn't work in biology without universal common descent evolution?

Contextually, it was pretty clear to me that AAA wasn't just talking about common descent, though. He was fairly dismissive, to my reading, of the view that gradual change over time could happen, in his initial response to me. Of course, he's welcome to correct me on that.

Positive claims are made, in that complex specified information, and irreducible complexity are indicative of design. This is because these things require a choice and planning. Something which an intelligence is capable of, and which natural forces and chance are not. This can be tested by probability studies and knockout tests.

Um, you are aware that arguments from ignorance don't count, right? I asked for positive evidence, and you handed me a pair of negative arguments, especially in regard to the latter. Don't believe me? Let's write out the actual formulation of those arguments, then:

"DNA contains complex, specified information, and I can't see how that could happen without design," is, aside from the utterly meaningless buzzword-ey nature of the key phrase there, seeking to get to design by removing evolution from the possibility space. It's a negative argument based in ignorance: evolution can't explain the existence of this information, therefore god.

Irreducible complexity is even worse, because it's just "I can't see how these would have evolved, therefore they're irreducibly complex." Never mind that in every instance of supposed irreducible complexity, a reducibly complex answer has been found, the point is that, again, it's an argument that relies on evolution not having an answer, rather than actual positive evidence. Both of these claims just seek to reduce the pool of possible answers, fallaciously assuming there are only two options in there, rather than actively pointing to one particular option.

[Jenny A]

Incidentally, can you furnish an example of positive evidence for intelligent design? I'm thinking hard, but I'm drawing a blank.

Positive claims are made, in that complex specified information, and irreducible complexity are indicative of design.  This is because these things require a choice and planning.  Something which an intelligence is capable of, and which natural forces and chance are not.  This can be tested by probability studies and knockout tests.

If there is a designer he's amazingly good at constructing complexities out of proteins,  yet really bad at functional design and singularly unable to make design changes independent of previous designs.  Consider the rather odd and unintelligent way the human eye is constucted.  It's amazing it works given the unnecessary blind spot created by running all of the nervestate in front of rather than behind the light receptors.   It's a flaw we share with all other mammals,  but not with all other animals with eyes.  It's analogous to a TV and monitor manufacturer who cannot make design improvemnts to monitors based on improvements to TV screens, or vice-versa.

Odder still he he leaves ever degenerating blue prints for past models cluttering up the current models:[

Comparison of the DNA genetic sequences of organisms has revealed that organisms that are phylogenetically close have a higher degree of DNA sequence similarity than organisms that are phylogenetically distant. Genetic fragments such as pseudogenes, regions of DNA that are orthologous to a gene in a related organism, but are no longer active and appear to be undergoing a steady process of degeneration from cumulative mutations support common descent alongside the universal biochemical organization and molecular variance patterns found in all organisms. Additional genetic information conclusively supports the relatedness of life and has allowed scientists (since the discovery of DNA) to develop phylogenetic trees: a construction of organisms evolutionary relatedness. It has also led to the development of molecular clock techniques to date taxon divergence times and to calibrate these with the fossil record.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence...on_descent

Imagine the blue prints for a skyscraper interleaved with schematics of huts and wooden trusses misspelled or misdrawn, with notes to ignore the interleaved material.  Because that is how genetic blueprints work.

Why it's almost as if the design of living orgaanisms is needlessly complex due to common decent without the ability to remove past mistakes, features, or instructions except gradually through many generations.

[robvalue]

It's bad enough we have a hundred pages of the argument from ignorance. What's even more worrying is the refusal, or inability, for these guys to even state what their position is.

Embarressmant? They know how it sounds, and it doesn't sound like something a scientist would ever say.

Protection? They know their position hasn't got a leg to stand on, and this would become apparent if they actually presented it.

Confusion? They don't even know what they believe. Just that "there was a designer"; about the vaguest, most useless claim you can make. But of course, we know they believe an awful lot more than that. They won't say any more because that's as far as you can take the idea without putting a tin foil hat on and abandoning all pretence of science. And it's already not science.

[GUBU]

Biochemistry, Cell and molecular biology, and Biological literature are the three courses I'm talking about.

And from your postings on here I'd have bet the house on basic English, introduction to addition and subtraction and history for junior infants were the three subjects.

Nice to see that you continue the charade of pretending to be a biology student. Always good to keep up tradition, even when that tradition is to continuously lie about yourself.