Atheism is unreasonable

[Esquilax]

I actually do have basis, and the fact that you even question this makes me draw the conclusion that you really don't know the history of 20th century cosmology, son.

If you had it, you'd just present it. You wouldn't puff up your chest and condescend; that's the classic tool of the liar.

Besides, I'm asking for a very specific thing, which the next thing you said hints that you didn't even pick up on. It seems that actually paying enough attention to understand the full scope of what's being said to you is kind of a challenge for you.

Man oh man. Just let me go, man. I would really hate to (actually, I would rather enjoy it) prove you wrong yet again. Do you think I just said it just to say it??? No. So please spare me of having to provide you evidence of my claim about Einstein originally believing the universe was static and eternal until his equations proved otherwise. If I do, this would be at least the 4th thing you've been proven wrong on.

It's not about Einstein's initial beliefs, it's about the nature and intensity of them. You compared Einstein to Jonathan Wells, but in order for that comparison to be at all meaningful you would have to have reference to Einstein going into his chosen field specifically to "destroy finite universe models." Otherwise all you're describing is a scientist finding himself to be wrong about a position he once held, a common enough occurrence in the sciences, but not at all a valid comparison with what Wells did.

My point, that your grandstanding only makes more amusing, is that you either have very specific and very unusual proof to make the comparison valid, or your comparison is an invalid equivocation. I suspect it's the latter, and you're just stupid enough to think you have the former. But if you just post a link that says "Einstein thought X thing at one time in his career, but then discovered that his research suggested Y," you won't have proven me wrong. You'll just have proven the depth of your misunderstanding on yet another topic.

Just do some research, educate yourself, and stop arguing with someone that is above your intellectual superior...

Given the redundancy in the end of that sentence, I highly doubt you're my intellectual superior. But as I've suggested in the past, you're completely incapable of accurately gauging your own intellectual acumen.

Well, all it was was just a question. All you had to do was simply say "no", instead of going on an unnecessary rant and rave over....nothing.

So, you were just throwing out a red herring rather than answering my initial question, but I don't have any reason to be irritated with you?

It is called "over-analyzing".

Ah yes, it's over-analyzing to attempt to find some connection between an initial question and its eventual answer. Silly me.

And "kind" can be traced all the way back to God.

Not until you can demonstrate god, chump.

Also, did the bible ever exhaustively explain, or even cursorily explain kinds? Or are you deriving your sophisticated "dun looks like a dawg!" concept from the few scattered uses of the word therein, and not any sort of concrete definition? Because unless you can specifically point to a passage in the bible where god is quoted as defining what a kind is, you are literally just making this shit up as you go along.

So basically when the theory of evolution was somehow/someway integrated with science, things started getting unjustifiably technical, when all you have to do is look at the wolf and husky and determine that they are clearly the same kind of animal.

I notice you keep equivocating by only bringing up visually similar pairs of animals whenever you bring up kinds. But in your view a Chihuahua and a wolf are also the same kind, and they don't look much alike. An Emu is a bird, so probably in some bird kind, but it doesn't look anything like a sparrow. And Hyenas look like dogs, but are really cats. Raccoons look like possums but they're closer related to bears, while Koalas aren't bears at all, they're marsupials. Your system of just ogling individual creatures with your untrained eye and then making it up as you go along is not as accurate or helpful than the scientific classification, which is not "unjustifiably technical." There are a lot of animals in the world with weird morphological patterns. Just because something is more complicated than you want it to be doesn't mean it's incorrect.

In fact, it's really telling that your rebuttal here is nothing more than "the science is too complicated for me! Things that are really correct should be so simple an idiot like me can understand them!"

Bio-babble. I want observational evidence of any changes that is even remotely similar to the reptile-bird crap. All of that bio-babble means nothing unless you can give me an observation which will allow my sensical mind to conjure up the thought that an elephant and snake sharing a common ancestor.

So, instead of actually responding, you're just going to run away like the intellectual coward you are, while repeating the same debunked fallacies over and over?

Well, whatever you want. Just don't be surprised when nobody buys your excuses. If you actually want to address the genetic evidence like an adult, I'll be waiting. If you just want to stick your head in the sand like an obstinate toddler, that's your problem.

I accept genetic evidence and I interpret it as the designer using the same "stuff" to do his thang with. When you tie that in with all of the other stuff that science is having a difficult time explaining to me, I'd say I have damn good reasons to believe in the Creationism over atheist, naturalism, and any other "nism" you can throw at me.

"Common design, common designer," is an utterly nonsensical proposition in the face of the reality of the biological world. There are simply too many useless or entirely counter-intuitive elements of the animal kingdom to consider them designed with any sort of competence. Emus, for example, have tiny little claw arms under their feathers, like a T-Rex does, that have no muscle attachments at all. They can't move them, so why are they there? Giant Squid brains are shaped like donuts, and their esophagi pass right through the hole in the middle. If they swallow something bigger than the hole, they can get brain damaged, and you call this something designed? There are plenty more too, I could write a book on all the awful design in nature, and some of these have even been told to you recently; I remember your answer to the "chicken have genes for teeth" problem, and it shows yet again how little you actually think before you open your mouth.

If you accept that all the "kinds" have evolved some since the beginning, to the point where chickens once had teeth but now don't, then what are you using as indication of design at all? All the animals you've ever encountered in your life have genetic codes that you fully admit have varied from what they once were for millions of years, generation by generation, over and over. By now, they wouldn't resemble the original design at all, but somehow, without actually looking at any of it, you're saying you're able to intuit that there was a design, from examples that, if you're right, look nothing like the design that spawned them.

In essence, right or wrong, you have no basis by which you can be "interpreting" the genetic evidence to mean anything at all about a designer, meaning that the argument from ignorance you just made regarding it isn't the only problem you've got going on; you've got no justification for your initial claim either. You're just making it up.

Uh oh. hock:

I was on a roll and while i was on that roll I got through off with the whole koala "bear" thing and added it to the bears....no harm...just take it off the list and my point still remains

The point that you're a smug bastard who thinks the stuff he makes up in his own head is equal to the rigorously studied field of phylogenetics, and should be applied to everyone else?

As I said, take it off the list. It ain't no thang. What about the bears, though? A scientist may come and tell me that a grizzly bear and polar bear are different species (whatever the hell that means), fine...call it what you want, but they are the same kind of freakin' animal...they are both BEARS.

No, you're not just going to brush this off like it's nothing. It's a demonstration, like the Red Panda one before this, that your basic intuitive process is flawed and leads you to incorrect conclusions because of your stubborn refusal to account for all the variables. Your method might work okay for a surface level reading of simple, familiar animals, but the moment you start going any deeper it leads you astray almost immediately.

Thats the point, there is no fossil record. You don't know whether those fossils had any kids, and you certainly don't know if they had DIFFERENT kids. It is all based on speculation.

So now you're telling me- based on no information, of course- that, what? Those fossils were the only ones of their species, and there wasn't an entire species of them out there breeding in order to make that one fossilized one? And that the principle of gene replication with variation, which has been observed universally in every species we have ever encountered, was somehow suspended with regards to these fossils?

And despite the fact that you're saying all this based on absolutely nothing at all, we should believe it to be true over the actual evidence that says differently?

Esquilax..I have a question for you bro...how the HELL did you draw that conclusion based on what I said? Man, you have some serious reading comprehension issues.

You were the one saying that the only reason I'd object to getting a hamster when I came to buy a dog was because I knew what kinds are. It's not my fault you're unable to remember your own conversation.

We all have similar genetics because we are all made up of the same building blocks of life...that doesn't prove evolution at all.

Yes, but my point was that the closer two species are physically, the closer their genetic code tends to be. It's an observation based on the same techniques that'd tell you if you're related to your parents via DNA test, so why would that genetic relationship not also be true of the animal kingdom? Because you don't want it to be?

Ohhh, so you don't really know, do you? Well, there is really no reason to think that God doesn't exist, in my humble opinion. See? You've told me yours, now I've told you mines.

So now you're quote mining me? Because there was another part to that sentence that indicated that while there's no reason to think these animals aren't related, there are reasons to think that they are. Which you then took out of context to make it seem like the reason I accept evolution is only that there's no reason to think otherwise.

How dishonest, yet totally unsurprising coming from you.

Can you rule out intelligent design based on any evidence that you have??

Yes, for two reasons:

1. The myriad elements of animal physiology that are entirely discordant with the idea that they were designed, yet fit perfectly with the idea that they evolved. For example, the long, circuitous path of the Giraffe's laryngeal nerve.

2. The complete lack of evidence for a designer of the animal kingdom.

I ain't cherry picking either. I just have no good reasons to believe in the theory...kind of the same reason you don't believe in God. And even if I did believe in evolution, I would believe that it would still require a divine hand...because we would be left with the whole abiogenesis thing, which is a separate and even more difficult problem. So either way you turn, intelligent design is standing right there.

Only if you're susceptible to arguments from ignorance, which I'm not. I'm perfectly okay with you accepting evolution and still being a theist, as that's what many theists manage to do just fine. But us not currently having an answer to the problem of abiogenesis is not evidence for a god, and it doesn't mean that god is the default until we have that answer. That's a god of the gaps argument.

And you have plenty of good reasons to accept evolution, you're just willfully misinterpreting them to hold onto your presupposition.

Oh, so those small changes will eventually lead to big changes over time, right? So no one was around when the changes happened, and no one WILL be alive (no one that is alive today) to see it happen in the future.

Ever seen a domesticated silver fox? They look like this:



Whereas the wild version looks like this:



Now, that level of change occurred over a few generations, under the observation of some still living people. It's only one example of such changes, but there are others. That can occur in one human generation; over millions of years that'll just keep going. Whether you're alive to see it or not isn't relevant, since science doesn't rely on direct observation to form conclusions. That's a point I keep making, and you keep ignoring.

You don't see the scam involved with that? How convenient. "No one has ever saw it happen...nor will they ever see it happens, but trust us...it happens!!!"

We haven't seen it happen, but we have many indications that it did, including that it continues to happen today on the scale that the "scam" describes. You can't call it a scam when the thing it describes is literally happening right now. Again, if you want to say that there's some mechanism stopping that level of evolution from accumulating then you'll need to demonstrate that. You've failed to do so thus far, in fact you haven't even acknowledged that people have been asking, which to me is an indication that you don't have anything useful to say on this point, and so are strawmanning desperately with this repetitious "we've never seen it though!" crap.

So basically, you are using an example of something that we can actually use science with...you know...observation and repeated experiment? You are taking something that can be observed, experimented, and validated...and comparing it to something that has never been observed, experimented, and validated?

Wow. Good job.

We have observed evolution, experimented with it, and validated it. You are claiming, just as in the ball example, that there's some force that will stop evolution before a species change can occur, that there's something stopping the ball rolling to the bottom. You offer no evidence for this, other than that we've never seen the ball at the bottom of the hill. But in both cases, in evolution and the hill example, your claim is that a physical phenomenon that we know and can observe to happen (ball rolling and genetic change with variation) will not continue to happen past a certain point.

You need to provide some evidence for that, else it's not faith to believe that a thing we observe and can experiment on as it happens, will keep happening as it has for all of human history.

Its funny that despite obviously comparing apples and oranges, you seemed quite convinced with your analogy.

It's equally funny that you felt the need to wrench the example so far out of its socket in order to strawman me again. Either you were being exploitative, or you're too stupid to see the real point. Don't worry, I've explained it in much more detail now; you won't be able to dodge the issue again without looking like a fucking conman.

If canid is a bio-babble way of saying "dog", then no arguments here.

Canidae is a group classification describing all animals of canine stock. It means you can keep calling dogs dogs, wolves wolves, and so on, but if you need to describe the entire group of them then you have a single word for it. The fact that even that single word is too complicated for you to handle doesn't mean it isn't efficient.

Also, and this just occurred to me for like the fiftieth time, it's hugely hypocritical for you to lean so much on (what you mistakenly believe to be) the scientific method in your argument- "we haven't observed it, science needs to have observed things!"- before turning around and dismissing out of hand those parts of that same method that you don't like- "it's bio-babble!"- when it suits you.

Which is it, dude? Is science a valid tool, or isn't it? You can't say it is when it's convenient, and isn't when you don't want it to be.

Unless you can prove how life can come from nonlife, no way you can be confident that the theory of evolution is true without intelligent design...and that is a fact.

Argument from ignorance, for one. For two, my position on god is "I don't know." So I'm not particularly worried about proving that abiogenesis must have happened. But this argument is about evolution, something that definitely can happen, and no amount of dishonest deflection from you is going to convince me to drop that argument to chase your insipid red herrings.

Stick on the topic, pigeon.