Was at least the first life form created?

[Eilonnwy]

Now there you lost me. I can agree that the statements “I believe in God” and “I do not believe in gods” are both truth claims but I think they are self-verifying and, therefore, do not require any more proof than the statement itself. If I made the statement to you: “I believe in God.” what proof could I offer that that is what I believe? Would it be reasonable for you to respond by saying, “No that is not what you believe” or “You have not proven that that is what you believe”? I do not think so. At best, if you wanted to push this, you could ask “Why do you believe in God?” and I could provide my reasons. Given my reasons you could reasonably counter by saying “Those reasons would not lead me to conclude there are gods.” However, I do not think a reasonable response would be “You have not proven your case” because in my proposed conversation, there was nothing I needed to prove to begin with. I would not have provided my reasoning to show “that God is" but merely to explain why I believe in God. To make either of the statements “I believe in God” and “I do not believe in gods” merely give some information about the sayer, much like if someone tells you what their name is. I do not think it is anything more nor do I think either of the statements should be construed to be anything more, especially considering how wording gets dissected so much here (which I think is a good thing and doesn’t happen as much as it should even here).

What do you think? Did I convince you?

You missed the point. The word "belief" doesn't automatically mean you have or do not have the burden of proof. It's about claims. i.e. "There is no God" and "There is a god" are both claims that require a burden of proof. Rejecting those claims do not. You can say "I believe there is a God" and you still have the burden of proof if you want to convince someone else.

Relative to your comments regarding science, I must say that they seem to be riddled with the fallacy of reification. While I realize that the site provided does make a distinction between reification and speaking of abstractions metaphorically, I do not think you are doing the latter in some instances. Let me give you an example. You say:

Science has a good idea, and abiogenesis is becoming more and more promising, and the Urey-Miller experiment, while not a slam dunk, shows it's possible.

I think I count three instances of reification here. 1) “Science has a good idea”. Science is an abstraction of what scientists do. Science itself does not have any ideas at all. Scientists carry out experiments and/or make observations and then draw conclusions about those experiments/observations. Assuming that the scientist is careful (which I think is a good assumption generally as I do not think many scientists are interested in falsifying their data), we can then agree on the observations made. The conclusions are another story. 2) “abiogenesis is becoming more and more promising”. I am not sure about this one. It could fall into metaphoric use so I will not elaborate on this. 3) “the Urey-Miller experiment…shows it’s possible”. No. Urey-Miller themselves demonstrated that when such and such is done, amino acids, etc. are produced. That is it. If you want to conclude from that or use that as reasoning why you think abiogenesis is possible, then feel free. I cannot argue with that. But I think it is unreasonable to conflate the experiment/observations with any particular conclusion like you do in your statement. What you are essentially saying is that there is only one reasonable conclusion that one can reach from the facts of the experiment without having to explain why this is the only reasonable conclusion or even a reasonable conclusion at all.

I don't agree. When I say science has ideas, I simply mean there are many hypotheses that are being explored and tested. When I say abiogenesis is promising, I mean it has not been disproved scientifically and looks more and more likely. That doesn't mean it can't be disproved. As for Urey-Miller, I don't know how more clear I can be. Amino acids are the building blocks of life. It's an important step in life from non-life. I fully admit that the experiment does not show how the first living organism was formed on earth, but it does not disprove abiogenesis but rather provides valuable insight. So yes, I'm being metaphorical. I tend to do that, I'm a fiction writer. Never once did I say, abiogenesis is absolutely proven and Urey-Miller proved it.

I think this is a totally unsupported assertion. Many earlier scientists believed in God and the Bible and yet made many wonderful contributions to our body of scientific knowledge. Did they stop looking and learning just because they believed in God and the Bible? No. I actually love science. When I read about all the things that scientists discover it really blows my mind and the more I learn the more I realize how little we really know. My believe in God and the Bible in no way stunts my growth in this area even though I might draw different conclusions than the scientists would. I really think this goes back to what I said about presuppositions.

I don't think it is. Many people do everything they can to stop scientific inquiry. This is why we have a battle in various states and countries to protect evolution from people who want to "teach the controversy". There is no controversy in evolution. It's a fact.

I'm not saying every believer everywhere has no interest in science. There are many brilliant scientists our there who are religious. However, there are instances where people, especially fundamentalists (of ANY religion), try to block scientific learning. This is why many people home school their children, so they won't learn science. This is why the religious try to book burn and censor. They have no understanding of science and they don't want it, because they would rather believe God did it, and don't dare question it. That's all that I was referring to.

I think this is too inaccurate and broad sweeping to be reasonable. It think it would be reasonable to say: “I think with better science it is possible to demonstrate or prove abiogenesis can happen and from this I would conclude that that is how life can into existence in our universe.” Again, I think it makes it more clear to separate the facts of science (the actual observations made) from the conclusions drawn therefrom.

I don't think my statement is too broad. Science has proven the Big Bang, Evolution, Gravity, etc... These are all theories that are fact, proven by science. It's not fallacious at all to think science could do the same with abiogenesis someday if abiogenesis is in fact true.

I might be able to agree with this depending on what you mean by “evolution”. If you are referring to the observation that organisms change and that “natural selection” occurs, I would wholeheartedly agree with you. Those are observations that are easily verified. If you are referring to common descent (the concept that all life descended from a common anscestor), I would wholeheartedly disagree with you. You may draw the conclusion from the observable facts that you think common descent is how the life we observe got here, but it is far from an incontrovertible fact. The type of evolution we do observe, as noted above, simply does not necessarily lead to the conclusion of common descent. Just because many people would agree with the conclusion does not make it a fact, as you have pointed out in other threads.

The theory that we all are descended from a common ancestor is fact. Francis Collins, the man who worked on the human genome and is Christian, states that the DNA evidence alone proves common descent. Then of course the fossil record proves this as well. This is an established scientific fact.

Please tell me you do know the scientific meaning of the word theory?

I think I said that I would take this as evidence for creation. I think throwing around the word “prove” in the way you do confuses things. You talk about “proving” things like science can lead to absolute truth. I do not think it can. We can make models that predict how the world behaves but they are just models. They do not tell us anything about absolute truth. Proof is the evidence sufficient to establish a thing as true, or to produce belief in its truth. (from dictionary.com) But it is clear that it is not talking about absolute truth. We could clearly both look at the same evidence (the observed facts) and it could prove one thing to you and another to me and neither would necessarily be right or wrong. I think we are back to the presuppositions with which we look at the observed facts.

Absolute truth is impossible. Humans are too fallible. The scientific method, however, is the most reliable method by which we can discern what is most likely to be true from what is most likely to be false. So, when I say it's not proof, I'm simply saying it doesn't meet the rigors of the scientific method. Never once did I claim science is absolute truth.

Besides, your so called "evidence" is terrible. It's kind of like a spin on the blind watchmaker. It's along the lines of saying "you come across a watch and you know it's designed" to "you see life being produced from non-life in a lab by people, so you know life has to be created". I know that's not exactly what you said, but it's along those lines of reasoning. It's a ridiculous argument that has been debunked repeatedly.

http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php?t...rom_design

My whole problem (maybe not my whole problem ) with the quote is the statement “God is a theoretical entity that is postulated by theists to explain various phenomena”. Isn’t this really begging the question? The question is whether or not God exists and one starts with a statement like above that assumes that God is merely “a theoretical entity”. Doesn’t that make the whole line of reasoning fallacious?

No. Theoretical doesn't assume non-existence. It's simply a way of stating that God is an entity that has certain attributes postulated by theists. It does not imply non-existence. For example, Neptune (the planet) was a Theoretical Entity. Scientists saw unexpected changes in Uranus's orbit that they couldn't explain, so they came up with the theoretical entity of an 8th planet to explain these changes. Eventually, Neptune was proven to exist.