The Problem with Christians

[LadyForCamus]

It is unreasonable to require extremely rigorous evidence for something that is so difficult to test.

LOL. Except in the case for abiogenesis, right? Because in THAT case you won't be satisfied until a protocell forms before your very eyes. Wow. Thank you for exposing your hypocritical approach to determining whether or not things are true. I didn't even have to do any of the work this time.

[AAA]

It is unreasonable to require extremely rigorous evidence for something that is so difficult to test.

LOL.  Except in the case for abiogenesis, right?   Because in THAT case you won't be satisfied until a protocell forms before your very eyes.  Wow.  Thank you for exposing your hypocritical approach to determining whether or not things are true.  I didn't even have to do any of the work this time.

Do you see the difference though? I have required rigorous evidence to demonstrate whether or not a designer exists. After I have concluded yes, then I don't require the rigorous evidence for the identity (although maybe you're right and I should). 

An analogy with abiogenesis would then be if we somehow used rigorous evidence to conclude that it did happen (analogous to me concluding designer above), then we would not require extreme evidence for how it happened (analogous to determining the identity). This seems to actually be what most scientists have done. Do you see the analogy I was trying to make?

[Jenny A]

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.  

Actually in programming and prints for machine controls, I see this quite often.

And that is because of reuse of instructions right?  There  is a common descent of the prints and/or instructions.  Add that the included extraneous material goes back a millennia or three and is gradually  corupted over time in lineages (not cross the board based on  time without reference to relationship).  And add,as you chose ignore that  innovations outside each lineage are not transferred between lineages and decent is obvious.  

Lack of a designer is obvious for other reasons.  Suppose various machines, a sewing machine, a roto tiller, an air compressor all began as pedal powered.   The gas motor is later used for sewing machines] but ]sewing machines retain a useless small pedal system and contain blue prints for a working pedal system.  The roto tiller also retains pedals but becomes electric and never uses gas engines.  The newer air compressors become wind  powered but only after first being electric. All have inoperative pedals and the air compressor has an inoperative electric motor.  Designers don't work that way, but heredity does. 

Or as in my example, that you chose to ignore,  suppose TV screens never did away with vacuum tubes and gradually perfected them but computer monitors developed other technology that never spread to TV screens?  Add that computer monitors retained useless little non functioning vacuum tubes even as they became LED.   Would an engineer include vacuum tubes in a flat screen monitor?  Hooved mammals still have five toes hidden away.  You still have a tail bone but no tail. Is that a thing a designer would do?

Human designed machines show evidence of reliance on previous  innovations, but pass that knowledge from application to application.  Self oiling machines s[/size]tart with locomotives,  but designers transfered the idea to all kinds of enigines gas, steam and electric, not just new trains. Though new radios are sometimes designed to look nostalgic, the nostalgia is tacked on not hidden away in deep design.  Old timey radios may have knobs for show, but they don't have non functional knobs hidden away inside next to solid state tech.  Biology innovates but knowledge does not pass outside of descent lines.  Useless parts from the past retained in newer designs is the norm and that norm is not for show, it's under the biological hood deep in bone and tissue. 

If there is a designer of biology, he is curiously unable to transfer ideas from one family of animals to another and inordinately drawn to retaining inopperative physical references to old designs within the same family.  And he includes many parts which can be disposed of without loss of function.

[Silver]

It is unreasonable to require extremely rigorous evidence for something that is so difficult to test.

I think you meant to use the word impossible rather than "difficult".

[AAA]

It is unreasonable to require extremely rigorous evidence for something that is so difficult to test.

I think you meant to use the word impossible rather than "difficult".

That's a pretty bold statement

[Silver]

That's a pretty bold statement

I'm not much for useless tact.

[AAA]

That's a pretty bold statement

I'm not much for useless tact.

They used to think it was impossible to tell the composition of the stars, but we can. They used to think we wouldn't be able to map the movement of subatomic particles. They thought we wouldn't be able to sequence the genome. "impossible" to study is a bold statement made (incorrectly) by many people over the years. We'll see.

[Silver]

They used to think it was impossible to tell the composition of the stars, but we can. They used to think we wouldn't be able to map the movement of subatomic particles. They thought we wouldn't be able to sequence the genome. "impossible" to study is a bold statement made (incorrectly) by many people over the years. We'll see.

Yeah, there's a difference between what we thought we couldn't do and what we have learned we could do through time.

However, thousands of years of human evolution have led us to computers, iPhones, and many scientific wonders, yet god has yet to be discovered.

It is clear to me. Is it clear to you?

[Redbeard The Pink]

We're still talking about the evolutionary record for photosynthesis, right?


Those organisms are part of the evolutionary record for photosynthesis (among other things, but I'm trying to stay on subject).


These organisms display metabolic processes and reactions that are simpler forms/pieces of the process known as photosynthesis, so they show how the process might have developed in steps from simpler ones.


It's hardly speculative because we can still study those life forms and come to conclusions based on direct observation. That is literally the opposite of speculative.

All we have are incredibly complex ways to convert light energy to chemical energy and more complex ways to convert light energy to chemical energy. I'm not saying that there aren't more than one ways to do it, I'm saying that it is speculative to say that one led to the other. 

Transitioning from one to the other would require invoking many enzymes that we have no idea if they ever existed. It IS speculative. It is speculation based on observation, but it is speculation none the less. Why not speculate and say that the more complex ones have degraded and lost components to become the less complex ones?

Based on semantics like that, I could call anything "speculation" with the intention of dismissing it.


Geology? That's just speculation based on what we observe about rocks.


Chemistry? That's just speculation about what we observe when we mix stuff.


Theology? That's just speculation based on what we observe in religious texts and testimonies.


That's just an intellectually dishonest word game, bro. Shame shame. 


When both genetics and metabolic processes connect older forms of life with newer ones, and the older forms of these processes appear to be more simple than what we currently observe, then yes, it is reasonable to "speculate" that these processes continued to grow and refine over time as some of these organisms evolved into newer, more complex things.


Please tell me you're not trying to throw down the "you weren't there, therefore you're just speculating" argument. You're not, are you? If that argument were sound, forensic science would be totally useless, and so would many other forms of science. We do not have to observe an event directly to know that it occurred. We can reason that an event occurred by the evidence it leaves behind. This is why field evidence trumps eyewitness testimony in both the lab and the courtroom.

[robvalue]

Did I get this right...

If a claim is borderline impossible to test, because it's "so complicated" (like God) we have to lower the standard to almost nothing?

That's odd. I can make up any complete shit then, and prove it by saying I have personal experience of it. What the hell does this achieve? Science is meant to be about learning things about reality, not making them up.

Let's face it, most God claims are impossible to test. They have to be, or else they fail immediately. They can't be allowed to enter the realm of reality. That's not the sceptic's problem. It just shows the person making the claim has no (credible) way of knowing their claim is true, and we can dismiss it via Hitchin's Razor.