A simple challenge for atheists

[Simon Moon]

Ok, so scientists have created a self-assembling molecule that can self-replicate. I was wrong. But still, the environment proposed for this to happen in nature is still highly unlikely. Will scientists find a way in the future to explain how it could have happened naturally? I guess that is possible - in hind sight.

It doesn't matter if the environment was exactly like that of early earth. All that matters is that, in some environment, it could have happened naturally.

Unless you want to say that on earth, it required a god, but elsewhere in different environments, it could have happened without the intervention of a deity.

I was asked for an example of a scientist who came to became in God, and why he came to believe.

Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., is the director of the Human Genome Project. His most recent book is "The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief."
edition[dot]cnn[dot]com/2007/US/04/03/collins.commentary

But as a scientist, he consciously leaves his beliefs at the laboratory door.

He is a true scientists, unlike all the creationists dressed up in lab coats.

As a former atheist, he asked: "Why are the physical constants in the universe so finely tuned to allow the possibility of complex life forms?"

Some of the most intelligent people are still capable of using logical fallacies in an attempt to support their beliefs.

The fine tuning argument is fallacious on several levels.

He search lead him to God, through the writings of C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton. C.S. Lewis makes the argument that Jesus was either Lord, a liar, or a lunatic. You are forced to make a decision. His existence is recorded in the history books. Flavius Josephus' account is enough. Josephus was a Jewish military leader and an historian. He lived at the time of the first church and Jesus' followers.

Too bad CS Lewis missed an important choice from his false trichotomy; that would be "legend".

Please stop with Josephus. The passage that mentions Jesus is a well known interpolation or forgery.

"Here was a person (Jesus) with remarkably strong historical evidence of his life, who made astounding statements about loving your neighbor, and whose claims about being God's son seemed to demand a decision about whether he was deluded or the real thing. After resisting for nearly two years, I found it impossible to go on living in such a state of uncertainty, and I became a follower of Jesus."

If only someone was able to produce this alleged "remarkably strong historical evidence". All that is ever presented is mentions of Christians by historians that lived well after Jesus allegedly lived.

Again, Collins' statement above is fallacious. He presents a false dichotomy. "Deluded or the real thing" are not the only 2 choices.

He is still a scientist:
"Yes, evolution by descent from a common ancestor is clearly true. If there was any lingering doubt about the evidence from the fossil record, the study of DNA provides the strongest possible proof of our relatedness to all other living things. But why couldn't this be God's plan for creation?"

Yes, he is quite a brilliant scientist. Too bad he doesn't ask for the same level of evidence for his religious beliefs.

"I find no conflict here (in miracles), and neither apparently do the 40 percent of working scientists who claim to be believers."

Most of these scientists do not believe in a personal, miracle working god. They are deists, not theists.

[Cyberman]

Bob, props to you for trying to justify faith in your pet god, but do you think nobody here has ever heard of Francis Collins, C S Lewis, G K Chesterton, Josephus etc and what they wrote - or didn't write - about the subject?

[Esquilax]

Ok, so scientists have created a self-assembling molecule that can self-replicate. I was wrong. But still, the environment proposed for this to happen in nature is still highly unlikely.

How many times do you theists need to be told that improbable is not impossible? And if your argument is just that it's improbable, well, at least we've established that it is possible, something that god has never had.

Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., is the director of the Human Genome Project. His most recent book is "The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief."
edition[dot]cnn[dot]com/2007/US/04/03/collins.commentary

Francis Collins: A man who is right on a lot of questions, but wrong on the god one. So what?

As a former atheist, he asked: "Why are the physical constants in the universe so finely tuned to allow the possibility of complex life forms?"

And here, we see the fallacies that led a smart man to come to god: he's begging the question something awful, right now. Fine tuned? How did he possibly demonstrate that the constants were fine tuned, rather than just a specific set of unguided circumstances, no less improbable than any other set? Because to be clear, they are no less improbable than any other set of constants, if they were to happen randomly. Collins is just heaping a lot of unjustified extra significance on these specific constants because they happened to produce life, and he's life too, but he has no way of knowing whether the universe began with that significance in mind. It's all just assuming the conclusion before the question is even asked. Fallacy.

He search lead him to God, through the writings of C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton. C.S. Lewis makes the argument that Jesus was either Lord, a liar, or a lunatic. You are forced to make a decision.

C.S Lewis was a moron, and his Lord, Liar or Lunatic crapola is a grotesque oversimplification. Just off the top of my head, Jesus could also never have existed, or the accounts of his life could have been exaggerated later. Those are two extremely obvious alternatives, and they never occurred to Lewis? Moron, or he's just as dishonest as all the other apologists.

His existence is recorded in the history books. Flavius Josephus' account is enough. Josephus was a Jewish military leader and an historian. He lived at the time of the first church and Jesus' followers.

Josephus' account was a known forgery, and none of the "accounts" of Jesus in the history books are written by anyone born even in the same decade as his death. Try reading those history books, instead of just assuming Jesus is in there.

"Here was a person (Jesus) with remarkably strong historical evidence of his life, who made astounding statements about loving your neighbor, and whose claims about being God's son seemed to demand a decision about whether he was deluded or the real thing. After resisting for nearly two years, I found it impossible to go on living in such a state of uncertainty, and I became a follower of Jesus."

Every part of this quote is wrong, for the reasons I listed above. Therefore, Collins converted on faulty premises. Not a particularly good argument for your religion, Bob.

He is still a scientist:
"Yes, evolution by descent from a common ancestor is clearly true. If there was any lingering doubt about the evidence from the fossil record, the study of DNA provides the strongest possible proof of our relatedness to all other living things. But why couldn't this be God's plan for creation?"

And here we have a shifting of the burden of proof: "It doesn't rule out my unjustified assertions!"

"I find no conflict here (in miracles), and neither apparently do the 40 percent of working scientists who claim to be believers."

And bizarrely, an appeal to popularity, which actually acknowledges that the popularity is on the other side. Collins might be a brilliant scientist, but like all other religious scientists, when he speaks about his religion his intelligence seems to vanish entirely, and his argumentation is as weak as they come.

I think there's a pretty good reason for that.

[IATIA]

Ok, so scientists have created a self-assembling molecule that can self-replicate. I was wrong. But still, the environment proposed for this to happen in nature is still highly unlikely.

Perhaps. Oh wait ... We are here. I guess not so unlikely.

[wiploc]

Imagine an alternate universe which contains a single hydrogen atom. (Lets not include dark matter or other forces in the discussion for the purpose of simplicity.) You could replace the atom with a proton, a neutron, a sub-atomic particle, or a string. The point is, it's real. It can be measured.

Now where did this hydrogen atom come from?
Was it just always there?
Did it spontaneously appear, ie. magically?
Did someone create it?

How did it come into being?

Imagine an alternate universe consisting of a single god. (Let's not include hydrogen atoms, dark matter, or other forces in the discussion for the purpose of simplicity.)

Now where did this god come from?
Was it just always there?
Did it spontaneously appear, ie. magically?
Did someone create it?

How did it come into being?

[Mr Greene]

So what we wind up with is yet another incompetent version of the "Cosmological Argument" as if we haven't dealt with that umpteen times already.
This is followed by some waffle in the vague direction of the "Anthrological Principle", (such originality here... )
**** it. Cut a long story short you got hoodwinked by this old scam and now expect us to be dazzled by it.
Bzzzt. wrong answer, but thanks for playing. NEXT!

[Chas]

Please provide a citation for this. Otherwise, it's bullshit.

"The Selfish Gene" 1976 (page 21-22)
"The Blind Watchmaker" 1982 (Chapter 6)

(Yes, I've read both books.)

Dawkins says that the since there is not enough time for the first strand of self-replicating DNA to have assembled by random chance, a plausible explanation that others have come up with says that it may have involved crystals - which are capable of self-replicating.

The only problem is, is that DNA is several orders of magnitude more complex than crystal lattice.
Besides being able to create an exact duplicate of itself, DNA can
perform self-repair for minor errors.
99.9% of human DNA is identical to other humans [1]
Approximately 2 g of DNA could hold all digitally stored information in the world. [2]

[1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_profiling
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_m...%28data%29

So, either you didn't understand his point or you were dishonestly quoting.
Let's give you the benefit of the doubt and go with you misunderstanding.

DNA didn't just occur - it is the product of evolution. There was evolution before there was DNA.

---

Actually, I seem to recall this from a TED talk. It was about how evolution is not simply "blind mutation," but is instead constrained and shaped by environmental pressures. Once the process of molecular reproduction begins, mutation and development are anything but blind.

So it's an accurate quote, ripped from context to make it seem as if it means something other than what Dawkins was saying. Quelle Surprise.

Dawkins wasn't talking about evolution. He was talking about the beginning of life on earth.

Yes, he was talking about evolution. As soon as there were replicators, there was evolution. Where, precisely, is the line between self-replicating molecules and life?

[Rev. Rye]

Imagine an alternate universe which contains a single hydrogen atom. (Lets not include dark matter or other forces in the discussion for the purpose of simplicity.) You could replace the atom with a proton, a neutron, a sub-atomic particle, or a string. The point is, it's real. It can be measured.

Now where did this hydrogen atom come from?
Was it just always there?
Did it spontaneously appear, ie. magically?
Did someone create it?

How did it come into being?

Here's the answer: My dick created it. My dick is the uncaused cause. My dick exists outside of time. My dick is the only thing that can exist outside of causality. I know this is true because I say it is true.

Okay, in all seriousness, here's the thing: most people who spend their time pondering this question tend to be more willing to accept an honest ambiguity than a false concrete answer. And, really, is your rhetorical answer any different than my joke answer when you replace "my dick" with "God"? If so, why?

[Fidel_Castronaut]

Then another problem is, what did God create the universe from?
If something can't come from nothing, then he must have used something to create the universe. "Speaking" it into existence implies that the universe just 'popped' into existence, from nothing. Which would mean something can come from nothing.

Which is it?

You are confining God to the rules of our universe. God is outside of our universe. He created the rules.

We don't believe you.

[Alex K]

Oh I see, your "something must come from something rule" does not exist outside the universe. This eliminates the need for your God to begin with, genius!