RE: A simple challenge for atheists
January 18, 2015 at 10:53 pm
(This post was last modified: January 18, 2015 at 11:03 pm by Davka.)
(January 18, 2015 at 6:46 pm)bob96 Wrote: IF God exists, then it is possible that He created the energy from nothing. By definition, God can do this. It is outside the realm of science, and of our understanding. It is the realm of faith - believing without evidence.
Yup. That's faith all right - believing something with no evidence.
Quote:IF God does not exist, then this energy could not have come from nowhere. To believe that this energy did come from nothing requires faith - believing without evidence.Two problems with that statement. 1) We don't know where the energy came from, whether or not it's possible for something to come from nothing, or whether something always existed. That's one of the things science is trying to figure out.
That means that what you're arguing against is a Straw Man: a position that nobody actually holds or believes.
2) What we actually do believe is simply that the Universe exists, and that we don't know why. And there is certainly evidence for that. Look around, it's a Universe! How did it get here? Was it always here? We don't know. And neither do you.
No faith required.
(January 18, 2015 at 7:20 pm)bob96 Wrote: Dawkins wasn't talking about evolution. He was talking about the beginning of life on earth.
Ah - abiogenesis. A different matter entirely, and he's right. It couldn't have happened randomly. And those are older books, written before the more recent work on abiogenesis.
Chemical biologists today believe that they have a fairly accurate model of the chemical makeup of the primordial Earth. And upon studying that model, they state that, given the attractive and combinant properties of the chemicals in the mixture, life would have almost no chance of not forming. In other words, when you have a specific set of planetary circumstances - energy from the sun, atmosphere, liquid water, and the chemical soup that should be found on every earthlike planet in the "Goldilocks Zone" - those chemicals will assemble themselves into primitive self-replicating molecules.
Just as certain conditions produce crystals, or gas giants, or methane snowstorms, so certain conditions produce life. It's not chance, any more than two magnets attract each-other by "chance."
