Atheism is a religion

[Blam!]

But Blam! That is all his/ her intellect is capable of.... totally incompetent.

---

しかし、BLAM！それはすべて彼/彼女の知性の能力です....全く無能。

私は日本人と仮定して、正確な時はあなたの最初の言語ですか？

Perhaps, but someone has to point out the misconceptions he has.

And no, Japanese is not my first language. I'm still learning, though. I have English to Japanese translation book and the program with ability to type ひらがな and ｶﾀｶﾅ｡

[Whateverist]

Deceived, making the case for evolution isn't a thing to be done in a post. Have you ever picked up a copy of "Origin of the Species"? If no one has taken up your challenge to your satisfaction perhaps that is because our lives are too busy to write you a book. Also, my layman's knowledge of the subject wouldn't permit me to do it justice. If you'd really like to understand the case for evolution you'll just have to slog through a real book.

You talk about the percentage of scientists who believe in cretinism being low. But the percentage of scientists who are Christians is much, much higher. Many educated Christians have no problem accepting evolution. They understand that scientific theory is all about our current best explanation given all the data. They understand that it is provisional and subject it to continued challenges as new data emerges.

Why do you insist that the creation myth contained in your particular holy book is the stone cold truth? Many educated Christians understand that the bible contains some wisdom stories which speak to us to the degree we are ready to understand them. They understand that the bible is not a reference book for empirical facts. If you want to know things about the world there are many better sources. Why would you believe that the often translated ramblings of some ancients would better be able to tell you about chemistry or physics or cosmology? Or do you believe that God whispered into those writers ears and that His intention was to write the complete book of everything so that men would never have to learn anything for themselves?

There are many better questions for you to consider than the one you pose us.

[Cyberman]

A short list of transitional fossils.

That's a rather shallow list. The Archaeopteryx has recently been reclassified by paleontologists as a true bird because each of its features is either found in true birds or is absent in many reptiles. The Sinornis: long bony fingers and teeth ≠ dinosaur. The Yinlong and Anchisaurus having two to three bird-like features doesn't say they evolved. Even evolutionists don't widely agree birds evolved from these two types. Tiktaalik: one year after its pronouncement as a transitional fossil, footprints were discovered in an older strata. Creatures like the stickleback fish being of different sizes is mere small-scale adaptation. They are still stickleback fish! These examples are at the bottom of the barrel. Each organism is unique in its own right and follows to have been created that way. 80 million years and all they have are some dinosaurs with thick-domed skulls, others with delicate limbs, and a bird with long fingers and teeth? There should be some missing links with some identical features to a species, while actually being a genetically different species (unable to reproduce). One organism having a shell and short snout is a far cry from an organism with an entirely different type of shell and dissimilar short snout.

Wow, way to shift the goalposts there. First you say there are no transitional fossils at all; now you complain that the list of such fossils is too 'shallow'. At the very least pick which hat you want to talk through.

The problem essentially is that creationists, wifully or not, cannot recognise that every species is a transitional one between what came before and what may yet be. They insist on being led on a leash through a gallery of snapshots showing every single evolutionary step and when such a snapshot is missing for whatever reason, instantly declaring victory by jamming their particular pet god into the gap. Worse, they dismiss the snapshots that we do have whenever they happen to be inconvenient, just as you did. It's hardly an original point, but consider: if you were shown an album of photographs depicting your entire life, one taken every day, could you then point to the one that marks the transition between the baby you and the infant you? If the album was incomplete, if it had several pages missing, would you then dismiss the entire corpus as "too shallow"?

The remarkable point is not that the fossil record is incomplete, it is that that we have as many fossils as we do. Making a fossil is a lot harder than you think, so the fact that there are gaps ought not to be the surprise that creationists want to make us think it is. The popular YouTuber and lecture pundit AronRa has made a whole series of videos on this subject; I heartily recommend them to you even though I have a sneaking suspicion that you won't bother.

Also: footprints were found in an older strata than the Tiktaalik one - and this disqualifies the fossil as transitional how, exactly?

[Doubting Thomas]

I often wonder just how many different species of animal there were on the planet throughout its history, seeing as how we only have fossils from a limited number of them. I'm sure there were far more dinosaurs than we could have ever imagined, but are lucky enough to know about the ones we do. Just think about how many different species of animal are on the planet today, and the relatively few species of extinct animals we know about.

[Mister Agenda]

I know enough about evolution to know it’s not science. It has not been observed, tested or demonstrated, which is the definition of science.

From Merriam:

3a : knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method b : such knowledge or such a system of knowledge concerned with the physical world and its phenomena : natural science

The dictionary's definition of science doesn't match yours.

There is no cause-effect evidence that organism A became organism B. Transitional fossils do not exist in the fossil record, which doesn’t make sense because there should be hundreds that show the passage between birds and reptiles.

All fossils are either transitional forms or the last example of their kind before extinction. Paleontologists disagree with you about how many of what type of fossil there should be. Fossilization is a rare event, only a tiny fraction of organisms have been preserved as fossils.

We have thousands of dinosaur fossils, but not a single intermediary form in the 80 million year term they supposedly developed. In 80 million years, no dinosaur-bird became fossilized!—unless we haven’t discovered it, which is doubtful as we have plenty of ordinary dinosaurs from the Jurassic period. Where are the specimens with half scales and half feathers?

You might want to bother googling before making such sweeping claims. You're about 20 years out-of-date: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feathered_dinosaur

Another problem with their evolution is that reptile lungs consist of millions of tiny air sacs.

Good thing birds evolved from dinosaurs instead of reptiles, then. Mammals evolved from reptiles.

Birds’ lungs have tubes.

And mammal lungs are spongy, composed of tiny air sacs, like reptiles.

Some evolutionists insist that Platypuses are a link between mammals and birds,

Would you please name the idiot you got that from? Platypuses share characteristics of reptiles and mammals, don't let the 'bill' fool you.

but all Platypus fossils are exactly the same as modern forms. The structures of egg and milk glands are always fully developed and offer no solution as to the origin and development of the womb or milk glands.

It's a shame, but things like milk glands don't fossilize as well as bones. And: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platypus#Evolution

And more typical mammals are found in much lower strata than the egg-laying platypus.

Platypus-like fossils are found in the Cretaceous Period. Please give an example of mammals found in much lower strata than that.

We should at least have variances of modern organisms, like human legs one mutation away from today’s shape, but we don’t. Every species found is as it is today, minus the microevolution changes (working with existing genetic info).

In other words, every species found is as it is today, except for differences you refuse to count.

Evolutionists continually say that humans did not evolve from apes: they have a common ancestor. But there is no evidence for this common ancestor because it is not in the fossil record.

True, we evolved from earlier hominids, who evolved from a common ancestor with apes, and we don't know exactly which fossil ape is the common ancestor that links the two lines. But you're okay with us evolving from Homo Erectus because of the fossils that support that, right?

The “proof” evolution has is really only scientists’ inferences.

As a rule, within their field, their inferences are much, much better than yours.

When they point to analogous structures, all they know is that the organisms look alike. A wing and a fin have similar-looking bone structures? So what. That’s like saying my Toyota came from my Jeep because they both have 32 inch wheels.

Your Toyota and your Jeep do have a common ancestor. Their similar wheels are not a coincidence. It took us a long time to get from a wheel to a Toyota, each improvement an incremental step in the minds of designers, but we acted much, much faster than evolution does.

I’m not bashing science.

You don't realize you're bashing science, at least.

I’m saying that evolution isn’t science because it fails to use the scientific method: it isn’t observed, tested or demonstrated.

The conclusion of evolution is based on observation. It makes 'historical predictions', which have been tested, such as when they were used to find Tiktaalik. To the extent that it is conceivable to demonstrate on a human timescale, such as with bacteria and insects, evolution has been demonstrated.

All the data in the world won’t give evolution proof.

All the data in the world wouldn't be enough for you.

You can throw scientific principles around anything, but that doesn’t mean one supports it directly.

Not without legitimate scientists calling you out.

You could say there used to be a breed of lizard that jumped a hundred feet to the rainforest floor and use gravity to say it could travel downwards and the principle of air resistance to say that flaps of skin could keep it falling at a safe speed. But none of those show the lizard actually existed, just that it could have, given nature.

Sheesh. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_dragon

Evolution is similar. There is no conclusive evidence, just hypotheses for how, using the materials we have, an animal could have come to be. Mutations happen, but we have no reason to believe they could drive progress.

Geneticists disagree.

In fact, we have experiences to show they do the opposite. 99.99% of mutations are harmful—they are errors; mistakes!

More like 70% harmful, a huge difference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation#Harmful_mutations

And what Natural Selection does is conserve what (usually weakly) beneficial mutations do occur, increasing their frequency in the population. They don't have to be common.

Instead, look at the scientific laws that contradict evolution. Spontaneous generation has been solemnly disproved (life from non-life).

The spontaneous generation you're talking about concerns ideas like flies coming from dung or mice arising spontaneously from garbage. The generation of life from prebiotic conditions is not contradicted by anything known to science. And this time you're over a century behind, still fighting Pasteur's battles. The rest of us have moved on.

Conservation of mass says matter cannot be created or destroyed (Big Bang).

Fallacy of composition. Matter and energy can't be created or destroyed within the universe. That's not a law that applies to the universe itself. Don't you believe the Bible when it says existence was created from nothing?

I know absolute dating will come up here, so let me address it. If you carbon-date life forms between the oldest rock layers, you get 6,000-10,000 years. Hypothetically, if the earth is young, carbon dating would be accurate. K-Ar dating would be dead wrong. In fact, if you date recent volcanic rocks with K-Ar they come out to millions to billions of years! Link:
http://evolutionwiki.org/wiki/K-Ar_datin...anic_rocks

Guess what? That's why Ar dating isn't used to date volcanic rocks. Not all dating systems work well in all situations. More importantly we know why Ar dating doesn't work well on volcanic rocks and why it does work well on others. There's a lot to learn if you don't presume scientists are nitwits way behind the erudition of armchair critics.

Moreover, there shouldn’t be any carbon left in the old life forms (like dinosaurs) to begin with. It should have decayed to 0 atoms a hundred times over. But it remains, and happens to be in the exact quantity that corresponds to the Bible. Therefore, science supports creationism. Scientists choose the higher number on the preconceived assumption that the earth is old. They base this on evolution needing billions of years to occur. Clearly, that is circular logic. Picking the method that closest supports your theory (K-Ar over C-14) is not objective at all. And if it’s not objective, it’s not science.

You really, really want science to support creationism. That's why they started calling it 'creation science'. You know that science works and crave its validation. Creation science makes a fatal mistake: it's out to prove a particular outcome. That's perhaps the most important thing science must not do if it is to succeed. That's why we have peer-review and double-blind studies, because scientists are as human as the rest of us and easily fooled by confirmation bias. It's why we have a method that, above all, roots out bias and destroys it. Have you had enough errors pointed out to you yet to realize that your creationist websites are actively lying to you? You, I excuse. You don't know any better. They know that what they're telling you isn't true. They know about transitional fossils, the actual rate of harmful mutations, that conservation of energy applies within the universe rather than to it, and they gave you the wrong facts. That's because the fact aren't on their side. I hope some day you can see that.

Peer-reviewed by who? Non-evolution believing scientists have their work peer-reviewed too, and make great cases for Intelligent Design.

In their own journals, where they don't have to deal with those pesky 'real' scientists.

Who’s right?

The side with the most evidence and the best explanation for it.

From what I’ve seen, science supports creationism.

Get your science from the source people who actually have to produce results that will stand up to legitimate peer review get it, and you'll see differently.

If anyone here thinks it doesn’t, point out which part and I’ll explain it away.

Confidence that you can explain anything away isn't something of which to be proud, it's merely bragging that you're close-minded on the subject.

[TheDarkestOfAngels]

A 1991 Gallup poll of Americans found that about 5% of scientists identified themselves as creationists, and that didn't include those convinced of Intelligent Design, or simply unconvinced of evolution. Saying they 'aren't doing it based on science' is a straw man argument. Can you read their minds?

No, saying they are convinced of intelligent design because they aren't doing it based upon science is a statement of fact.
Since you appear to simply be listing fallacies in completely inappropriate contexts, I'll remind you of what a strawman arguement is:

A straw man is a component of an argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position. To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by replacing it with a superficially similar yet unequivalent proposition (the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.

Since I did not create an artificial position for myself to refute, I did not create a straw man arguement.

I know this isnt' a a straw man arguement to say that Intelligent Design isn't science because everyone who, to my knowledge, is promoting intelligent design has zero evidence that this is the case and the arguements that HAVE been made have either been outright fabrications or misrepresentations of evidence (that is to say, saying something is evidence of intelligent design despite not supporting it at all) or based upon fallacious arguements.

As such, intelligent design has zero evidence to support it and the so-called evdience proposed to support it (the eye is something many such individuals point to as evdience of design) is misrepresented (the arguement is that the eye cannot occur through natural evolution) and can easily be refuted by actually understanding how evolution works given that many christians and ID supporters appareantly do not. (That is to say that the eye can, has, and would do so again given the evolutionary advantage it brings to those who evolve such a structure.)

So, that is a rough idea as to why intelligent design isn't science.
There's also the fact that all of science is falsifiable and ID and especially YEC is not.

The first hit in my google search:
http://creationists.org/former-evoltioni...tists.html
Many scientists become Christian because of their scientific discoveries. Mathematician and physicist Frank Tipler said:

Yeah - not buying it. You show me peer-reviewed papers by any of those individuals (peer reviewed by scientists and published in scientific journals - not church/religious sources) and I'll give those people some credance.
I can't tell you how many ministers claim to have said that they were once atheists because they were angry at god (or something similar) and then found their way. The entire explaination just shows how little they understand of atheism and I would dare say that those 'scientists' simply weren't or at least aren't anymore.

Perhaps you could locate published papers (rejected or not) that those individuals made when they were scientists as well as the research that supposedly convinced them. Given that I see nothing in your link but what may as well be BS, I see no reason to accept it as anything but.

I can guarentee you that the evidence in support of evolutionary science on this thread is rife with links and sources to peer-reviewed scientific papers and on the off-chance they didn't, you could easily perform your google searches on evolution and look around yourself.

To claim that a large number of people believing in one thing makes it true is an appeal to popularity fallacy. My challenge still stands. Can anyone give me true scientific support for evolution? The burden of proof is on you.

And where, pray tell, that I mention that evolution is true BECAUSE a majority of people BELIEVE it? I made the claim that evolution is true because THERE IS EVIDENCE FOR IT - something that intelligent design lacks. It lacks falsifiability and evidence making it not science.
Given that the evidence for evolutionar has already been provided on this thread for you and given that you're the one making the claim that intelligent design is anything other than BS, then I believe that means you're the one making the positive claim - not us.

I recommend that you use your google-fu to summon up some evidence for intelligent design in your next post because you've provided a heaping bowl of nothing thus far.

When you do, I myself and others will be more than happy to explain to you exactly why it's bullshit in much greater detail.

[genkaus]

Have you had enough errors pointed out to you yet to realize that your creationist websites are actively lying to you? You, I excuse. You don't know any better. They know that what they're telling you isn't true. They know about transitional fossils, the actual rate of harmful mutations, that conservation of energy applies within the universe rather than to it, and they gave you the wrong facts. That's because the fact aren't on their side. I hope some day you can see that.

You give him too much credit. His problem is not just having the wrong facts. It is his system of thought itself that is in error. His is an anti-conceptual mind, one that has lost the ability to integrate new facts in his knowledge. There is no way he could not have known that there is mountains of evidence for evolution. The only explanation is that he is incapable of integrating that knowledge. You can throw all the facts in the world at him, it would not matter. He won't be able to understand them and he will continue to use the same argument in the future. He would remember the facts you presented, but it still would not matter since those facts would not be integrated in his mind.

[Doubting Thomas]

Yes, his mind is totally closed to the fact that evolution is real and creationism is not.

Don't bother ever asking any creationist for proof that creationism or Intelligent Design is real. It always boils down to attacks on evolution or the Big Bang theory, or quoting verses from the bible like it's a textbook. Every time. That's all they have, and they cling to it as if somehow if evolution is false then biblical creationism is true.

[Undeceived]

The dictionary's definition of science doesn't match yours.

Yes, that is not dictionary.com's definition of science, but I'm using it in the sense of objective vs. subjective. Anything that has been observed, tested or demonstrated is, in that part, objective. If it has been none of the three (and I mean the driving forces of evolution), it is subjective. Evolution is subjective. Hypothesizing how life *could* have come to be is not the same as observing, testing or demonstrating how it really did.

Fossilization is a rare event, only a tiny fraction of organisms have been preserved as fossils.

The point is that we have gaps of hundreds of millions of years. We have multiple fossils of most fossilized organisms, but none of the vital others. For instance, there are hundreds of discovered trilobite fossils. Yet not one is varied from the rest. There should be another hundred with one mutation difference, another hundred with an additional one, and so on. If evolution really happened gradually, the number of varied trilobites should greatly outnumber the originals, all the way down to the horshoe crab. Thousands of generations aren't in the fossil record at all. If K-Ar dating is accurate, plenty of natural disasters happened that could have carried this out. Yet early trilobites are no different from later trilobites. They appear, then they vanish. It isn't that the fossil record is full of holes. The fossil record is nothing but isolated species with imagined links between them.

You're about 20 years out-of-date: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feathered_dinosaur.

I failed to find evidence beyond the wikipedia post for dinosaurs with feathers. All I found were quotes "with feathers" and a picture of the already determined Archaeopteryx hoax (true bird).
Some takes against thw wikipedia examples:
http://www.darwinismrefuted.com/natural_..._2_09.html
http://www.icr.org/article/feathers-miss...-dinosaur/
That scientists feel they need to purposely mispresent evidence doesn't sit well. If you could provide a real source that would be great.

Homo erectus:
The main evidence for this is the "Java ape-man." What Dr. Dubois found was a piece of the top of the skull, a fragment of a left thigh-bone and three molar teeth. But they were collected over a range of seventy feet, and discovered over the span of one year. The remains were next to an old river, where bones of other extinct animals can be found. How can it be known that they were from the same creature? Out of the twenty-four European scientists who evaluated the find, ten said they came from an ape, and seven from a man. That is no consensus. The main difference between the Homo Erectus skulls and most modern day's is the cranial capacity. But there are people today who DO have the same cranial capacity (like pygmies), and other races have protruding eyebrows (Native Australians). There is nothing else to say they were primitive.

As a rule, within their field, their inferences are much, much better than yours.

The fact remains, if the driving force of evolution is inferences, it is subjective and therefore not true science. And they have reasons for not wanting a God to exist, making their inferences less trustworthy.

To the extent that it is conceivable to demonstrate on a human timescale, such as with bacteria and insects, evolution has been demonstrated.

You mean microevolution, or variance, which is not true evolution. It involves the dying off of unsuitable genes and therefore does not increase information in the genetic code. You need mutations to do that, and progression via mutations has not been demonstrated.

Sheesh. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_dragon.

I wrote that as an analogy, to say that using principles like gravity and air resistance cannot prove the evolution, just as the possibility of mutations increasing genetic info is not proof without further evidence--and we know there are no (or a few questionable) documentations of mutations increasing genetic info. I am aware there are lizards that glide; I see them on Nature shows all the time.

The generation of life from prebiotic conditions is not contradicted by anything known to science.

That's because prebiotic conditions were contrived by men who thought, "Hmm.. what perfect conditions would I need to start life?" There is no evidence that the prebiotic soup existed, apart from its necessity to evolution.

Matter and energy can't be created or destroyed within the universe. That's not a law that applies to the universe itself.

Then you agree that the catalyst of matter and energy was supernatural. If its outside of the universe, it is not natural, and is then by definition, supernatural.

Creation science makes a fatal mistake: it's out to prove a particular outcome.

The same goes for evolution. The presumption is that God doesn't exist. Scientists work to figure out how the universe could come to be and develop all by itself, without ever leaving the possibility of God open. Suppose you're a child playing with blocks in an empty room. As you mature you wonder, "Where did these blocks come from?" So you dream up all sorts of ways the blocks could have made themselves. They used to be the size of a pinhead, blew up into gases, which changed elements, began living, made up functions for each part to work together and grow, evolved into different types of things, and finally--you have blocks! What the child never realizes is that their parent put them there. Unless, of course, the parent were to walk in the room in person (like Jesus) and leave a textbook (the Bible) describing how the world really came to be.

In their own journals, where they don't have to deal with those pesky 'real' scientists.

Oh, the irony. I've read books by widely acclaimed creation-scientists who explained how no evolution journal would let them publish. Can you imagine? Evolutionists claim creationists aren't reputable because they haven't appeared in an evolution journal, and then don't even let them in when they try! Neither side will let the other publish in their personal magazine... fancy that. There are, however, non-evolutionists who publish neutral articles in secular journals. But they don't call themselves creationists else they be excluded.

...it's merely bragging that you're close-minded on the subject.

On the contrary, it takes a broader mind to entertain possibilities of the supernatural. It would be easier to accept what secular scientists spoon-fed me, and I did that for years. I've been there and back. Try being a skeptic of your own side sometime--it'll make you stronger.

[Blam!]

Yes, that is not dictionary.com's definition of science, but I'm using it in the sense of objective vs. subjective. Anything that has been observed, tested or demonstrated is, in that part, objective. If it has been none of the three (and I mean the driving forces of evolution), it is subjective. Evolution is subjective. Hypothesizing how life *could* have come to be is not the same as observing, testing or demonstrating how it really did.

Are you imply "subjective" is totally fake and unscientific? Guess what? The theory of gravity is also subjective. Go and jump from tallest building to prove if the theory is false. Theories are, indeed, the subjective, but it is back up with [objective] evidence. Creationism is not science, because there isn't any objective evidence to support the existence of god.

The fact remains, if the driving force of evolution is inferences, it is subjective and therefore not true science. And they have reasons for not wanting a God to exist, making their inferences less trustworthy.

The concept of science is also subjective, but with basis of objective. Go and learn how scientific methods works. http://science.howstuffworks.com/innovat...ethod6.htm

Can you prove the existence of your god through by scientific methods through by observation means? Oh, right. You frigging can't. Despite without scientific methods, The one claiming the existence of god is not scientific.

Evolution is trustworthy, because it actually operates on objective evidence, data and scientific methods - unlike creationism.

You mean microevolution, or variance, which is not true evolution. It involves the dying off of unsuitable genes and therefore does not increase information in the genetic code. You need mutations to do that, and progression via mutations has not been demonstrated.

The theory of microevoultion has been demonstrated by bacteria's resistance of antibiotics. Check it out.

I wrote that as an analogy, to say that using principles like gravity and air resistance cannot prove the evolution, just as the possibility of mutations increasing genetic info is not proof without further evidence--and we know there are no (or a few questionable) documentations of mutations increasing genetic info. I am aware there are lizards that glide; I see them on Nature shows all the time.

There is documentations of live organisms being affected by changes of Earth's biodiversity eniviroment. Like this Peppered moth for example.

Then you agree that the catalyst of matter and energy was supernatural. If its outside of the universe, it is not natural, and is then by definition, supernatural.

"Goddidit" is a not scientific answer, I assure you.

The same goes for evolution. The presumption is that God doesn't exist. Scientists work to figure out how the universe could come to be and develop all by itself, without ever leaving the possibility of God open. Suppose you're a child playing with blocks in an empty room. As you mature you wonder, "Where did these blocks come from?" So you dream up all sorts of ways the blocks could have made themselves. They used to be the size of a pinhead, blew up into gases, which changed elements, began living, made up functions for each part to work together and grow, evolved into different types of things, and finally--you have blocks! What the child never realizes is that their parent put them there. Unless, of course, the parent were to walk in the room in person (like Jesus) and leave a textbook (the Bible) describing how the world really came to be.

Appeal to ignorance. Creationists have yet to provide the evidence of god, scientifically.