Why do atheists claim that the concept of God is so unlikely

Started by Yadayadayada, December 28, 2016, 05:13:54 PM

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Shiranu

1 post... who want's to bet he went out and bought "The Greatest Show on Earth" and is reading it as we speak?
"A little science distances you from God, but a lot of science brings you nearer to Him." - Louis Pasteur

SGOS

If modern people evolved from stupid people, how come we still have stupid people?

Baruch

Quote from: Blackleaf on December 28, 2016, 11:27:37 PM
You do know that atheism and evolution are not the same, right? There are theists who know that evolution is true. And atheists have plenty of other reasons for doubting the existence of gods, especially your Christian god. Historically, it gets a lot of things wrong, including virtually every detail of Jesus' birth. For instance, there is no way there was a census that required every citizen to pick up and move to their home towns. That would be a stupid idea. All you need to know for a census is how many people there are. If you need to know where people are from, you can just ask them. If the backstory of the most important person in the Bible can't be believed, why should anything from the Bible be trusted?

As for the theory of evolution, there is a ton of evidence behind it. There is absolutely no evidence for intelligent design. Yet you think you can get away with saying "evolution can't explain _____, therefore intelligent design must be true." No. That does not follow. Many things used to be a mystery, and gods were used to explain them. Then science came and removed the need for gods. Lightning is not from Zeus. The earth is not on the back of a whale. And soon enough, we will discover how life can come from non-life, and you theists will have to retreat to yet another mystery to move the goal post to.

I attended a lecture, by Dr Ponamparuma on abiotic evolution over 40 years ago, and he was redoing experiments from the 1950s.  I was getting an award for best HS chemistry student along with a bunch of other folks across the state.  The problem with abiotic evolution isn't the evidence, but how the question is phrased.  Looking in the wrong end of the telescope.  This is an old solved problem.  Comparative exobiology will teach us more, but not in my lifetime.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

widdershins

Quote from: Yadayadayada on December 28, 2016, 05:13:54 PM
Hello, I am hoping someone can explain the atheist viewpoint to me on the validity and probability of God's existence.

Most atheists will claim that the facts show the concept of a God to be so utterly unlikely as to be considered impossible.

But, this is not what the facts show at all.
That's not quite accurate.  There are no "facts".  There is no evidence for the existence of anything supernatural and never has been.  It's not that the evidence suggests there are no gods, it's that there is no evidence to suggest that there are.

Quote from: Yadayadayada on December 28, 2016, 05:13:54 PM
The theory of Evolution does not attempt to explain the origin of life, nor can it explain the existence of life from the first organic cell onward.
You are correct there.  It is the theory of abiogenesis which explains the origins of life.  The theory of evolution makes no attempt to do so as that's a completely different study.

Quote from: Yadayadayada on December 28, 2016, 05:13:54 PM
How does natural selection explain the eye, for example? How can atheists claim that complex organs like the eye could have evolved, when everything we know about the eye says that it is useless unless all the components are in place at the same time.
"Everything you know about the eye" is wrong.  Off the top of my head, horses and squids have eyes with "parts missing", if I recall correctly.  They do not function like ours do, but they are far from "completely useless".  Dogs can't see in color because they have a part missing, but their eyes are still far from "completely useless".  This argument ignorantly assumes an "intended purpose" for the eye with no other possible purpose, but the reality is that if you remove most of the parts of the eye so that all it can do is tell if there is light or not it is STILL not "completely useless".  It would still be enough for me to tell if it's night or day in nature.

Quote from: Yadayadayada on December 28, 2016, 05:13:54 PM
As for reptile-mammal transition evidence, where is it in "evidence"?
It is not my duty to hand feed the plethora of evidence in support of evolution to someone to lazy and willfully ignorant to look it up.  And the theory of evolution is not dependent solely on this EXACT bit of evidence.  If the evidence for that were missing (it is not) there would STILL be enough data to show evolution is a reality.  They can STILL show reptile to bird and fish to reptile, for instance.  Even if they got that part wrong, evolution is still sound.  The entire theory does not fall apart when you uncover a single flaw.  What happens then is that the theory is adjusted to account for the new data.  This isn't the Bible.  It's not a rigid, unchanging belief system.  It's not like your religion where if I prove that Jesus didn't exist the entire thing falls apart.  Prove something wrong in evolution and you don't throw it out, you fix it because scientific theories NEVER have to be "right at any cost".  That defeats the purpose of science.


Quote from: Yadayadayada on December 28, 2016, 05:13:54 PM
What are the actual mechanics that achieve it? Not speculation, actual. Not variation in a genus [which evolutionists cling to as being evolution]. Biological changes where a living entity can be observed to be changing into something different, breaching the barriers of its DNA.
This is a stupid request.  We can't follow along side a photon and observe that it always travels the same speed.  We can't observe water cutting a huge canyon over millions of years.  Time is a factor in evolution, which is exactly why dumb fucks want to see it "right now".  I can't prove you can't make a good chili from scratch by telling you that I want to see it RIGHT NOW and, if you can't produce it RIGHT NOW, it proves you can't do it.  It takes time and for me to demand the evidence without giving you the time is insincere.  Neither can you prove evolution is wrong by demanding we "observe" something happening which takes millions of years.  It's a bullshit tactic employed by the insincere in their tortured fight to avoid learning something.  If you don't want to know, quit fucking asking.  It's as simple as that.

Quote from: Yadayadayada on December 28, 2016, 05:13:54 PM
For reptiles to become mammals, that breach must have happened. So, someone please show where reptiles are in a state of doing so today - where that transition is taking place.
What is this "breach" you are talking about?  There is no "breach" of DNA.  If I take reptile DNA (or make it because they can make it from scratch now) into a lab I CAN change it, little by little, piece by piece, until it becomes human DNA.  I CAN (were I educated and given the proper funding, time and ethical latitude) take blood from a lizard, change the DNA and use it to clone a human being.  Or I can change just bits of it.  Maybe something will be created, maybe it won't even gestate.  But I CAN create one thing from an entirely different thing, or any of a nearly infinite number of "hybrid" steps in between.  This "breach" you keep bringing up, that's in your head.

Quote from: Yadayadayada on December 28, 2016, 05:13:54 PM
The facts show that what is overwhelmingly in evidence is what the Bible itself says, that like begets like, and we  all rely on that to occur in all facets of life, from growing/eating fruit and vegetables through to human/animal procreation.
You are relying on what you can see only with your own eyes, which is what the writers of the Bible were relying on.  That's why you're both wrong in the same way.  An iguana will never "beget" a cat, but over millions of years the offspring of the iguana may have changed so much that you not only no longer recognize it as an iguana, you no longer recognize it as a reptile.  That takes a lot of time and a lot of generations.  You only pretend to want to see the evidence for it.  What you really want is chili RIGHT NOW.  If you REALLY wanted to see the evidence for it you would take some biology courses (even basic courses would be a HUGE step up from what you know now) and learn why nearly 100% of the people who understand evolution intimately accept it as a reliable, dependable theory.

Quote from: Yadayadayada on December 28, 2016, 05:13:54 PM
It seems that the evidence supports the concept of God, rather than the atheistic claim that "God probably doesn't exist".
You have given NO evidence "in support" of the concept of God.  You have only given bullshit evidence "against" evolution.  The two are not the same thing.  I can't prove to you that the sky IS yellow by proving it IS NOT purple.  That's not how "evidence in support of" something works.  You have no evidence to "support" anything you've said.  Your entire argument was not "here is why God is real", it was "here is why evolution is wrong".

Basic high school science courses would be enough to tell you why your argument is utterly stupid (maybe not what they teach in the south).  You either want to learn or you don't, and it's pretty obvious which of this is true.  Either way, you have nothing to teach here.
This sentence is a lie...

Jason78

Quote from: Yadayadayada on December 28, 2016, 05:13:54 PM
Hello, I am hoping someone can explain the atheist viewpoint to me on the validity and probability of God's existence.

There is no atheist viewpoint on that.   An atheist is simply a person that does not have a belief in gods.  Any gods.

It's like trying to ask what the redhead opinion is on coffee.   If you ask ten different people, you'll get ten different answers.
Winner of WitchSabrinas Best Advice Award 2012


We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real
tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. -Plato

widdershins

Okay, I just did the math and came up with some very interesting results which I thought I would share.

Many times I see theists claim "Nobody has observed"...insert some process which takes a ridiculous amount of time and demand it be observed withing a single human being's professional lifetime as the mark for "evidence".  Of course they don't realize how ridiculous that is, but after doing some math I realized, neither did I.

Let's say the transition from species A to species B, two very different species, say, lizard to dog, takes only a lightning fast 1 million years.  We're going with absolutely ridiculous best-case scenarios here, and always to the benefit of the theist.  And let's say recent medical advancements let people live to be 1,000 years old, using the entirety of their life for the pursuit of this specific "evidence".  Even in that example, so ludicrously biased in favor of the evolution denier, they are asking for something in 1/1,000th the time it takes.

So let's compare that to the chili I mentioned earlier (now I really want chili).  I did some research and it usually takes 3-4 hours for contestants to make chili for a chili cook-off, sometimes taking as many as 12 hours for some recipes.  So let's go with 24 hours because we're always erring to the ludicrous extreme in favor of the evolution denier.  Now WE are the ones who get to set an arbitrary time limit on the chef, but we're going to be nice about it.  We are going to start with TWICE the maximum amount of time it might possibly take AND we're giving them 1/100th that time instead of the 1/1,000th that we got for ourselves, so again, this scenario is heavily biased against us.  So the minimum is generally 3 hours.  There are recipes online you can make in as little as 20 minutes, though I highly doubt they would win any cook-offs.  So how much time do you get?  You have to prep, assemble and simmer an award winning chili in 14 minutes, 24 seconds.  If you can't do it in that time it proves definitively that you are shit at making chili.  It does not matter how many awards (ie, how much evidence) you can produce to the contrary, you make your chili in 14.4 minutes and it has to beat out every other chili in the cook-off, which took a minimum of 3 hours to make or it PROVES that you are shit at making chili.

And reality is even worse.  I gave them 10x the actual human lifespan, and only half of that can really be devoted to "observing" something professionally.  With JUST that little tweak toward reality they are now asking that it be done in 1/20,000th the time, and we STILL aren't using a realistic time scale for how long it takes evolution to accumulate such massive change.  And it we tweak the chili example toward reality it normally takes only 4 hours, giving them as much as 1/10th the time they STILL only 24 minutes, just 4 minutes longer than the "quick" chili recipe I found takes.

That means that evolution deniers are asking for something AT LEAST 2,000 times more impossible than to create the best chili in a cook-off given only 1/10th the time of the other contestants.
This sentence is a lie...

Solomon Zorn

Yadayadayada posted 24 hours ago. Wonder if it was a drive-by.
If God Exists, Why Does He Pretend Not to Exist?
Poetry and Proverbs of the Uneducated Hick

http://www.solomonzorn.com

Unbeliever

God Not Found
"There is a sucker born-again every minute." - C. Spellman

Hydra009

Quote from: widdershins on December 29, 2016, 12:31:59 PM
"Everything you know about the eye" is wrong.  Off the top of my head, horses and squids have eyes with "parts missing", if I recall correctly.
IIRC, squid eyes are actually slightly better.  Squid eyes aren't inverted like vertebrate eyes are, so light goes directly to photoreceptors instead of passing through a thin layer of tissue first.



And human eyes are missing part of the eye - the nictating membrane.  Well, it's not missing entirely, it's just folded up in the corner and non-functional.  (the only primate with a functional nictating membrane is the Calabar angwantibo)


Unbeliever

The mantis shrimp has really good eyes:


http://phys.org/news/2013-09-mantis-shrimp-world-eyesbut.html












I wonder why God gave shrimp so much better vision than his humans? Maybe that's why he didn't want us eating the things... :headscratch:
God Not Found
"There is a sucker born-again every minute." - C. Spellman

Unbeliever

Quote from: Yadayadayada on December 28, 2016, 05:13:54 PM
Hello, I am hoping someone can explain the atheist viewpoint to me on the validity and probability of God's existence.




God Not Found
"There is a sucker born-again every minute." - C. Spellman

Johan

If protestants came from catholics, why are there still catholics?
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false and by the rulers as useful

Unbeliever

Quote from: Johan on December 29, 2016, 07:09:45 PM
If protestants came from catholics, why are there still catholics?


I like!

On a similar theme:

If Christians came from Jews, why are there still Jews?
God Not Found
"There is a sucker born-again every minute." - C. Spellman

Johan

If Americans came from Europe, why are there still Europeans?
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false and by the rulers as useful

Baruch

Quote from: Johan on December 29, 2016, 07:30:32 PM
If Americans came from Europe, why are there still Europeans?

There won't be, after the Muslims get thru ;-)  And no, Americans didn't all come from Europe, initially they came from Siberia ;-)
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.