Atheism vs. God's Existence

[Pat Mustard]

You're missing the point. This isn't something that requires belief, it's something you have to accept because it's a fact. A fact that's as certain as classifications in the periodic table. If you don't accept evolution as fact, you are not going to fare well in your biology classes, irrespective of how you think you're currently doing.

He might be going to a Christian college. Even if he's not, it's possible to get good grades in a field that you don't accept the findings of. I know good microbiologists and physicians who are creationists. A creationist can have excellent credentials in a field of biology. They just tend not to do work that produces peer-reviewed papers that successfully support creationism or intelligent design. Not because they aren't smart enough or proficient enough at their field, but just because the evidence that would support their opinion is hard to come by.

We've estabished that Junk Status is lying about going to a third level institution. He said catholic college in either Iowa or Ohio (I forget which state) and he's doing a biology degree where talking about evolution doesn't matter (nor properly citing your sources apparently). I did the google fu found only seven catholic colleges 3 I eliminated based on either lack of biology or undergraduate programmes and the other four had evolution as an integral and undisputed part of their programmes (one college going so far as to have a module explaining why evolution is right).

From there I deduced, quite reasonably, that Junk Status is lying through his arse about his educational achievements. So any time he talks about lectures, exams, gpas or anything else college related, just remember how far down he's gone in his personal rabbit hole, and think that this is likely one of many delusions he's built to support his base delusion, believing creatardism is true.

[robvalue]

This all shows the problem with trying to do science when you presuppositions.

If you already believe one of the popular gods is real and had a hand in designing things, then you automatically believe there is an intelligent designer.

How can you possibly study science with anything resembling objectivity if you have to force your conclusions to agree with this? Notice we don't see religious people arguing against 99% of science; when they disagree with it, it's nearly always about the same area. They seem to accept the rest without any question at all, even trying to use it against the parts they don't like. Yet all these theists trying to desperately to show evolution is false can't come up with anything remotely solid to cast doubt on the scientific theory.

If anything, this goes to show just how rock solid the theory of evolution is. But to understand why that is, you have to understand how science works. Some people genuinely seem to think half of science is just guesswork.

If you drop the presupposition and instead try to formulate a hypothesis about an intelligent designer, you run into a problem. What's the failure criteria? What does "non-designed life" look like? How would we tell the difference? If we found another planet teeming with life, and we studied it, what would the hypothesis be? If you have no hypothesis, no test criteria, then you're simply assuming your conclusion is true regardless of the evidence.

For all the blathering and pseudoscience that ID proponents have come up with, I've never seen a single falsifiable hypothesis. Just vague rubbish like, "Non-designed life would be simpler". How do you know this? How do you quantify "simple"? Science does not use vague terminology like this. I don't expect anyone to take my word for anything. (Go ahead and quote this part of my post and write "Only sensible thing you've ever said!!1111!!) I heartily recommend to anyone that they go learn for themselves. But look at different sources. Don't spend all your time hanging around creationist websites where their only goal is to try to debunk evolution. Go learn what it is they are debunking, and what it would even mean to do so. Learn how science works. Learn what evolution actually is. Because we see evolution all the time. Once you understand it, you'll see why we wouldn't reasonably expect anything else. It's just a matter of how we best model it.

[Esquilax]

For all the blathering and pseudoscience that ID proponents have come up with, I've never seen a single falsifiable hypothesis.

I'll go further: I've never seen an ID proponent furnish a hypothesis at all. The entire pseudo-field is filled top-to-bottom with nothing but negative arguments, chock full of attempts to disprove evolution with no actual means of testing for design beyond assuming it based on nebulous criteria that ID proponents merely assert to be indicators of design even if they show up in naturally occurring bodies, as though the mere fact that those criteria are shared between verifiably designed things and potentially natural things means that there's only one category for them, and therefore design. It's just a bunch of fallacious arguments from analogy, routing back to an overarching argument from ignorance.

And there's a reason for that. Design proponents are merely out to strike down evolution, not propose an alternative. The only reason they even have the artifice of an opposing "theory" now is because cultural expectations for these things tends toward requiring rational justification rather than mere assertion, and we know this to be true, because, ironically, we've seen the evolution of the ID movement from the creationism movement. We even have the transitional form between the two ideas! But since the ID guys are only out for the appearance of scientific rigor they don't even care, which is apparent in how unwilling they are to acknowledge the origins even when it's verifiable enough to be undeniable now.

ID is meant to sneak religion into science, they can't give the game away no matter how anemic their ideas end up being.