The Problem with Christians

[TheRocketSurgeon]

Perhaps someone should contact the accreditation folks and tell them that a university let one of theirs got away with a degree in science and a failure to understand the difference between tentatively accepting something as "most plausible" and a faith-decree. If you truly can't understand what "I believe this only to the degree it has been proven" means, then you're not a scientist, no matter what your degree says.

In my brief time at this forum, I have been asked over and over again to prove the supernatural, and been derided for not providing an "acceptable" proof. When I ask for proof of abiogenesis, I see a completely different standard being applied. You accept abiogenesis on the basis that it is "most plausible," with no proof whatsoever. How is that a more credible position than me accepting the supernatural as "most plausible" on the basis of both personal experience and the worldwide, centuries old existence of countless testimonies? At least there are hundreds of thousands of people claiming to have witnessed the supernatural and yet not one who has witnessed abiogenesis.

1) Eyewitness testimony is scientifically demonstrated (that is, by testing) to be ridiculously unreliable as a standard of evidence. Literally hundreds of experiments have been conducted that demonstrate this fact. If you are unaware that "someone claims to have seen" is not serious evidence, you have a serious problem in your life.

2) We do not say "most plausible" as "my favorite guess". We say "most plausible" because what we do know so far fits best with the model of reality, and it is reasonable to infer (which is why, again, dozens of groups of researchers--including the Jet Propulsion Lab, NASA's top scientists--are working on the issue, because it is clear there is something to find) that the historical, physical/chemical mechanism by which life's basic chemicals arose and began to replicate will be found. We know most of the steps, and are working on the remainder. The fact that it has not yet been accomplished doesn't mean we don't have a pretty good idea how it operates in general, and how it's likely to be discovered to operate specifically. We know that the precursor chemicals can and are made under natural conditions, via radio telescopes that look at interstellar ices. We know that life shows up on earth not terribly long after it was formed. We know that simple life (which made up our biosphere for well over 75% of the time it was here) can survive/thrive in many harsh conditions, such as the geothermal vents. We can create a few of the conditions in the lab, to see if these chemicals can self-assemble... and they do! That we have not yet progressed in our technology to do the full process is no more to the point that we cannot yet manufacture higher-complexity DNA sequences from scratch (they have made simple viruses/bacteria) does not mean we don't understand how DNA biochemistry works! And again, until it is proven, we only think it seems likely that this will be the explanation, since it does not require magic and the evidence points that way so far.

3) You think magic is real. Magic! And you're trying to assert that as equally plausible to a scientific model??