The Bible is the claim, not the evidence

[Esquilax]

Witnesses don't need to be alive to be witnesses.

But they do need to exist, something you cannot confirm, since they've all been dead for quite a while.

The account is not justified by the "how". My car moves when I step on the gas regardless of my understanding of "how".

Right, but if you had asked "how does my car move when I step on the gas?" and the answer you got back was "through space," would you be satisfied with that?

No more or less so then anyone can confirm the existence of anyone dead.

And how many other dead people who make claims of magic do you believe?

Just trying to weed out the those willing to lie for the gold mine owner and say he owns the gold mine when in truth it doesn't exist. Plenty of people lie, most people when faced with death would abandon said lie rather than than be killed just to deceive me (again an illustration).

But there are some who do die for any given religion, which completely nullifies the idea that those who died for christianity did so because it was true. These religions can't all be true, but they do all have martyrs, meaning that truth is not a prerequisite for martyrdom.

The popularity of a book says a lot about the factual accuracy of a book claiming to be non-fiction. Few people would continue to buy any book once it was found out that it was full of factual inaccuracies. Fiction books claim to be fiction which excludes them from being held to factual accuracy and so are not relevant to this discussion. I do agree with you that popularity does not equal proof. I was again illustrating that a book written even by one author, and not only surviving two thousand years but being the most purchased book of that period of time would be enough for me to take that gold mine owner on faith and invest that ten grand.

No, no it isn't sufficient to take stuff on faith. Even extraordinary, sustained popularity says nothing about the truth of an idea.

Depends how bad the gold mine owner wants my investment.

That doesn't answer the question.

If abiogenesis is not your origin of life please define where evolution begins. Where does life begin so that evolution can occur?

The question of the origin of life is the study of abiogenesis. Evolution concerns life once it already exists; having a problem with abiogenesis says nothing about evolution at all, because evolution is a confirmed, scientific fact. If you don't get your terminology right, it appears as though you don't actually understand what you're talking about.

That is a true statement but doesn't address the issue. There is an oxygen molecule in water and through hydrolysis it has the same effect on the bonds of amino acids.

But water isn't oxygen, and you have no idea what else was in the chemical makeup of the prebiotic earth. Let's not start making arguments from ignorance.

Never said science is always wrong. There is plenty of great science to go around. To qualify, my disdain is not for natural science (which is observable and repeatable) but rather for speculative science (some would call it historical science or the science of origins). If no one was there to observe it, scientifically speaking it's just speculation not science.

Um, no. See, evidence can be furnished for things even without being there. That's why our court system accepts DNA evidence, for example. We have evidence to support abiogenesis of varying stripes, which leads us to the conclusion that natural processes are sufficient to begin life, even without having been there. That evidence means we have literally one hundred percent more reason to believe in abiogenesis- tentatively- than we do creation.

Oh, and incidentally, if you're so happy to use the "were you there?" argument, were you there when god created the universe? If not, why believe it?

What was my argument from ignorance?

"I can't see how abiogenesis can occur, therefore it's impossible."