Argument #1: Transitional Fossils

[Mister Agenda]

This seems to be a common reply to those who reject God and don't have an answer to perplexing questions. "We don't yet but we are working on it." The problem is that the answer is, "God." Because some don't like that answer they keep searching in vain.

The entirety of science...everything that makes the modern world 'modern' comes from not accepting 'God' as an adequate substitute for 'We don't know yet but we are working on it.' There was NO unknown we couldn't have accepted God as being the answer for and quit looking. Maybe accepting God over 'We don't know yet' had something to do with that period where Christianity had near-absolute theocratic power and science advanced hardly at all for a thousand years.

---

I'm actually going somewhere with this.

I repeat: can inert matter, by itself, produce life?

Yes, God took dirt and made man.

But God couldn't poosibly have taken microorganisms and made man, eh?

---

You make it sound like "evolution" is some sort of intelligence.

I apologize if I made it sound that way. I assumed I could speak in colloquial English and you could grasp it without my qualifying every single nuance.

"it has to make do" and "its got to work with." Does evolution have a plan and a will? Sounds like evolution has some qualities of a Creator?

Evolution has no plan or will. It gives a superficial appearance of design, if you want to call that a quality of a creator. Because it has no plan or will, it can never plan ahead, and therefore it (evolution) is always drawn from what already exists in the genome of the organism under consideration, often giving rise to a 'jury-rigged' survival solution, like the giraffe's laryngeal nerve.

---

Is it your job to change my mind? I doubt I can change yours. However, we can contemplate what each other has to offer.

You could change my mind with evidence supporting your position. I used to be a creationists, investigating the evidence for myself destroyed my faith in creationism, but maybe I somehow misunderstood the evidence...if that's the case, show me what I got wrong.

---

You know what is ironic as well, Darwin did not deny that there was a God! In fact, in his sixth addition of Origin he refers to the Creator.

The ironic part is that so many theists are still butthurt about evolution. It makes not the slightest difference to us whether Darwin believed in God or not. Why should it?

One of best-known criticisms of natural selection was that nothing as complicated as an eye could have evolved purely by chance. Darwin's response was that we can observe many examples of the evolution of light-sensitive cells in nature. The most intriguing thought Darwin had on this subject was that just because we don't understand how something can evolve does not mean that the Creator wasn't behind it. His exact words in the sixth edition of Origin were "Have we any right to assume that the Creator works by intellectual powers like those of man?"[v]. Using the telescope as an example of a man-made optical instrument, he added: "May we not believe that a living optical instrument might thus be formed as superior to one of glass, as the works of the Creator are to man?"

That sounds like a very reasonable view for someone who wants to believe in God without denying over 150 years of science. Maybe you should consider adopting it yourself.

Darwin never said that there was not a Creator. And he never said that the Creator didn't create life.

Why do you think that is important?

---

You base your beliefs, and they are beliefs, on what you observe naturally. God, is a supernatural being.

Sure we have beliefs, but a theist who can correctly identify them would be a novelty around here.

He created a natural world but there are also supernatural events that have occurred, are presently occurring, and will occur. Just because you have not experienced any doesn't mean the supernatural doesn't exist.

Anecdotes don't support the existence of supernatural events. They're the claim, not the evidence.

---

Why do you call them conmen? They have a Creation Museum and they will be building a Noah's Ark replica. I am very impressed with their findings.

That they're trying to make money from verious side-enterprises is NOT an argument against them being conmen.

---

Since when is intelligence or knowledge correlated to the amount of books one reads?

When someone tries to argue a complex topic that they haven't studies up on, and what studying they have done is one-sided, it's not a good sign.

Do you see the amount of posts are on this thread? I already spent a couple hours trying to respond to posts and still like ten pages to go.

I appreciate your efforts in this regard. It's okay to ignore posts that are redundant or irrelevant and just focus on the more cogent ones.

I'm glad you read it.

Didn't you offer a deal to read a book that supports the theory of evolution if someone read the Bible?

Woops, he had a typo, that must mean his arguments are invalid. Not a good thing to have a grammatical error on an atheist board.

That is true. Atheists have a tendency to be grammar nazis. Not our finest trait. We also have a tendency to do better on tasks that involve critical analysis, which is one of our finer traits, though hardly universal.