Why the religious will never admit you won the argument (and why they don't care)

[Veritas_Vincit]

Thanks for your reply - taking your points in reverse order:

Your view of evolution is common among people who haven't studied science - I don't mean to be rude, it's actually a complex issue. What you're saying is "Look, evolution doesn't explain everything, therefore you can't disprove Creationism/ID." But, the way science approaches it, evolution isn't all or nothing, but it based in fact. Evolution isn't true because it disproves creationism, it's true because is based on observed facts and many types of evidence - check out this short video: https://youtu.be/lIEoO5KdPvg I also highly recommend Professor Richard Dawkins' book The Selfish Gene or The Greatest Show On Earth.

In Science, the word 'Theory' is used differently than in colloquial use, it doesn't mean just some possible explanation - this would be called a Hypothesis. The theory of something in science is the current best model of how all of the observed facts go together to create a model that is consistent and reliable and produces results - e.g Quantum theory. The "theory" of Evolution By Natural Selection is a model of how it works, but common ancestry and change over time are observable facts.

When you have two possible explanations for something, you have to look at the evidence for each to know which if either is correct. However, just because you disprove one, you haven't necessarily proven the other - it too could be wrong, and you should reserve belief until it has been demonstrated in its own right. Even if evolution were proved wrong tomorrow (which is impossible) it wouldn't mean creationism or ID is true - they would still need to be demonstrated. Otherwise the correct answer isn't one or the other, it's "I don't know." At the moment, the evidence for ID is non-existent, and mostly to the contrary.

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You say the NT is evidence that God exists - and you are correct. But consider what quality of evidence it is. The New Testament was written down decades after the life of Jesus by anonymous authors. All we have 2000 years later is copies of copies of translations of copies with no originals, made up of a collection of books which were arbitrarily combined when others were omitted, with evidence of mistranslations and tampering. Moreover there is no mention of Jesus in recorded history outside of the Bible (Josephus is regarded as an interpolation by scholars.) The evidence is about as weak as you can get.

By analogy, take the evidence for UFOs and alien abductions. You can go and talk to people alive today who can give you first accounts of their abduction experience. Many of these stories are consistent with other abductees' stories. Does that mean you believe them? Hopefully not, but why? Common sense - extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and we know that something as crazy as alien a fictions would need some real proof, not just eyewitness testimony. People lie, people misinterpret experiences, memory is very fallible. Have you considered that the evidence for UFOs is many, many times stronger than the evidence for God and Jesus in the Bible?

Whilst it is evidence in a lose sense, it is such poor evidence I reject out of hand, and nobody should believe it on that basis. And it's a good thing too, because I have studied the Bible and as I have explained the God presented there is evil, and quite the contrary of being something we need to "live worthy" of, I say he isn't worthy of you or me or mankind. He is beneath contempt.