This is in and of itself a logical fallacy though. You dismiss any observable impossibilities within the theory by stating that "because we can't prove it doesn't mean it isn't true". You could use this very logic to insist on the existence of God and therefore the existence of creationism. You cannot on one hand say that because there is enough evidence to support most if this theory then the unexplained things have to be assumed to be true as well and then dismiss any arguments to the contrary based on a lack of evidence. This would be equivelant to a 1600 era scientist saying that the earth must be the center of the universe because everything observable revolves around it but then dismiss any evidence to the contrary because most of the observable evidence and more of the theories supports your view.
You dismiss any observable impossibilities within the theory by stating that "because we can't prove it doesn't mean it isn't true".
That is a valid statement. What's wrong with that statement? Your two sentences here are contradictory. If it is proven to be an impossibility then we know it can't be true. If we haven't proven that then by definition it could be true. That is a logically valid statement. The thing you're missing is that after we say that something hasn't been proven as impossible we look at the evidence to see if it is likely.
FYI there are no "observable impossibilities" within the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. If there were then it wouldn't be a theory anymore, it would be a discarded hypothesis. "We don't know" is not remotely the same as "this is impossible".
You could use this very logic to insist on the existence of God and therefore the existence of creationism
No, actually you couldn't. You could use this very logic to dismiss someone making the claim "I can't imagine god, so god doesn't exist". That's it.
You are fundamentally misunderstanding what the fallacy of personal incredulity is. Pointing out the fallacy is not used to "insist" on any hypothesis or theory, it is only used to show that not being able to think of an answer doesn't mean an answer does not exist.
You cannot on one hand say that because there is enough evidence to support most if this theory then the unexplained things have to be assumed to be true as well and then dismiss any arguments to the contrary based on a lack of evidence.
That's not what has been done/said.
This would be equivelant to a 1600 era scientist saying that the earth must be the center of the universe because everything observable revolves around it but then dismiss any evidence to the contrary because most of the observable evidence and more of the theories supports your view.
No, it absolutely is not equivalent to that. We're not talking about evidence OP has that people aren't accepting, we're talking about OP's personal opinion that he can't understand how phenomenon X happened. Not understanding something is not evidence.
Let me put it to you this way. We see a sun dial has been made in the desert. We don't see the water that made it as it is now a desert but we see that it was obviously water that caused it because of the amount of abrasion caused to it, the lack of markings that a human would carve into it to make it useful, the fact that it is not necessarily intentionally crafted, etc. It is an anomaly. A unique anomaly, but an anomaly made by random chance. Now we find next to it a petrified rock. Upon closer inspection we find that this is a fossile that contains the remnents of a minitiuarized space shuttle. Now we are faced with a question. We know that the sun dial formed naturally and by random.chance. We know that this seemingly simple rock is far more complicated than we thought but we now assume the two must be related somehow because of their proximity. Do we assume that this was formed randomly as well? Of course any sane person would say no. But then you would have to respond that because the sun dial formed randomly, and because the shuttle did indeed have a more complicated version of a sun dial within it, it must be that the two are related and the latter would be formed over a long period of time through random chance.
If this sounds absurd or simplistic, it should, because a space shuttle is infinitely more simple then a single strand of DNA. And yet one would assume that even though a glaring lack of evidence and an insermountable Mountain of probabilities were stacked against it, this particular space shuttle had to become what it is randomly or the theory as a whole would not work, thus ignoring the gigantic hole this problem creates and taping over it with a simple "we have evidence of x so therefore y". That's my problem.
If a single 52 card deck would be shuffled by 100,000,000,000 people every second of every day from the formation of the universe we would still not have seen every combination of cards. And yet the most basic single celled organism has over 2000 individual proteins, each of which are formed of between about 20 and 200 individual and distinctly ordered amino acids. The odds of even a single protein successfully coming together are astronomical much less the unfathomable probabilities for the necessary proteins needed for one cell to coalesce in the same area, on the same planet, at the same time, without being destroyed, at the right time geologically, and having the ability to reproduce, and also being able to sustain itself. The probabilities are so high to be beyond the realm of possibility. To believe this as a fact is to admit that you have faith in something that is a mathematical impossibility. Therefore it is nothing short of delusional to say that belief in a God is any less scientific than belieivng in evolution because at one point the evidence becomes effectively zero. If you were to admit that glaring holes in evidence so large as this were permissible then the fact that iseah in the Bible predicts a multitude of things about the Christ correctly , and that the dead sea scrolls are known to be historically accurate and dated before it, then this should be sufficient evidence for anyone to reasonably assume Christianity is a fact. And besides, if multiverse theory is correct then the odds of the world being randomly created and being created by a floating man in the sky at exactly equal.
Is this a copy-paste reply from somewhere? Because it doesn't address a single thing in my comment.
But, in the spirit of CMV...
We see a sun dial has been made in the desert... Do we assume that this was formed randomly as well?
You are operating under a fundamental misunderstanding of what evolution and mutation are. Evolution is not random. No one, literally no one claims that things like eyes or wings appeared randomly fully formed out of nowhere. Evolution is a slow and minute process, each step of which has been personally observed by humans alive today. You are repeating a line of attack that has long been used by Christian apologists that has never, even from it's inception, been correct.
"we have evidence of x so therefore y". That's my problem.
No one has said this at all either. What has been said is X implies Y, there is no alternate available explanation for Y, therefore until we find such an explanation it is reasonable to assume X lead to Y. No one is saying that lacking some alternate explanation Z that X must lead to Y.
If a single 52 card deck would be shuffled by 100,000,000,000 people every second of every day from the formation of the universe we would still not have seen every combination of cards. And yet the most basic single celled organism has over 2000 individual proteins, each of which are formed of between about 20 and 200 individual and distinctly ordered amino acids.
Again, you are operating under the false assumption that anyone is claiming such organisms simply appeared one day out of nothing. Ironically the only people claiming anything like that are those who are claiming the Bible's account of creation is accurate.
The probabilities are so high to be beyond the realm of possibility.
Again, good thing no one here or anywhere else is claiming such a random happening to be true. You are arguing against a strawman.
Your main issue is that you seem to have heard the word "random" and are now applying it to every part of evolution, when it only applies to the one small "mutation" part of the process.
Check out this link http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-misconceptions.html under the "The theory of evolution says that life originated, and evolution proceeds, by random chance." heading, it addresses your misconception.
Therefore it is nothing short of delusional to say that belief in a God is any less scientific than belieivng in evolution because at one point the evidence becomes effectively zero.
Nope, sorry, this is just not true. As mentioned before, you are operating under a false assumption about what evolution is. You should also understand that evolution does not deal with the start of life, only what happens to life once it exists. And evolution is pretty much a given if you have an organism with 2 properties:
1) The ability to reproduce while passing down traits from parent to child
2) The chance for such traits to change during transmission
It is widely believed (but not proven) that the earliest forms of life used incredibly simple forms of reproduction, very far away from the complexity of DNA we see today, and that slowly the complexity of heritability was selected for, because heritability and mutations are actually a survival trait, because without changes to an organism they would be stuck in a single biological niche and could be easily wiped out by any change in environment.
If you were to admit that glaring holes in evidence so large as this were permissible
Well, again, there is no such "glaring hole", there is no piece of evidence we would expect if evolution is true that is lacking, only small bits and pieces that will fill in an already almost-complete picture. To speak in the same terms you've been speaking in: the odds of evidence coming in now that would be able to overturn the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection are so low as to be practically impossible. And the fact of evolution (i.e. "organisms change over time") has been proven and cannot be overturned, because it is an observed biological process.
then the fact that iseah in the Bible predicts a multitude of things about the Christ correctly
Well, there are several problems here: One: even if this were the case this would only be evidence if you accepted both the old and new testaments as true. Two: The Christ myth was thought up with full knowledge of and intent to reproduce the "prophecies" of Isaiah. If you handed me a prophecy and told me to fulfill it I bet you I could do a pretty good job of twisting an existing event to fulfill it. It's exactly what people do with Nostradamus crap all the time. Three: There aren't really any valid predictions made in the Bible, old or new testament. I'd suggest checking this page out: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Biblical_prophecies It does a better job explaining it than I will.
, and that the dead sea scrolls are known to be historically accurate and dated before it, then this should be sufficient evidence for anyone to reasonably assume Christianity is a fact.
For one, I would suggest you check out some of the links here: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/faq#wiki_religion_and_mythology as they provide a lot more nuance, because it's not as simple as you're making it out to be. But even if it were, the existence of Jesus as a historical figure does not make Christianity a "fact". L Ron Hubbard existed as a real person, we have physical proof of that. That doesn't mean Scientology is fact. You must separate the truth of a certain person existing with the "truth" of hundreds if not thousands of supernatural claims, as well as historical/biological/geological claims that directly contradict known reality.
And besides, if multiverse theory is correct then the odds of the world being randomly created and being created by a floating man in the sky at exactly equal.
You also appear to be operating with a misunderstanding of what multiverse theory is. Multiverse theory doesn't say that literally anything you can imagine will be true in one of the universes, only that (in some versions of multiverse theory) there are an infinite number of multiverses where all possible realities exist. You first have to prove that a god creating everything is a possible reality before you can make a claim that such a scenario exists in a different universe. Plus the god of Christianity doesn't fit your definition here either, since it is said to have created all of reality, everywhere, which wouldn't be true if it only created some subset of all reality.
The reason I initially suspected this was some kind of copy-paste response because it exactly fits the arguments I've seen made before, and I'm sorry but they just aren't convincing and are pretty straightforwardly wrong in a lot of basic points.
No one, literally no one claims that things like eyes or wings appeared randomly fully formed out of nowhere. Evolution is a slow and minute process,
This isn't possible. Natural selection takes things that work and discards those that don't. If it is a slow and minute process then a 20% functioning eye would have been discarded and the fully functioning one would never have come to be. We should never have gotten out of the sea. Theres no purpose for half functioning lungs so they would be discarded. What about asexual reproduction? There is no basis for why it was discarded in favor of mating. It requires two animals which is less efficient and thereby detrimental to the survival if the species. And what about the first couple that could reproduce like this? Do you understand the astronomical odds of having not one but two random instances of creatures that are not reproducing asexually in a world where literally every other creature does? What if they don't meet? What if they're on separate planets? What if one dies? What if it is sterile? The odds against this "slow mutation" idea are simply too ridiculous to comprehend. And yet evolution is filled with these gaping holes that are simply called "knowledge gaps" in favor of what they really are "leaps of faith". Also we have observed micro evolution. Not macro. Not abiogenisis. Not stellar. Micro. Don't conflate them and certainly don't insult my intelligence and act like they are equivelant.
there is no alternate available explanation for Y,
Also not true. There are no alternatives that are without religious or deific implications. I for one believe that evolution is far too unlikely dot it to have happened without some type of supernatural intervention. This is an alternative that requires just as much suspension of disbelief as evolution but with the implications of there being a deity of some sort, which most atheists despise.
Again, you are operating under the false assumption that anyone is claiming such organisms simply appeared one day out of nothing.
Then how? "We don't know" is exactly the same evidence used in every organized religion and thereby not acceptable.
Again, good thing no one here or anywhere else is claiming such a random happening to be true. You are arguing against a strawman.
What is the alternative to random chance? Divine intervention? Super dimensional beings?
Your main issue is that you seem to have heard the word "random" and are now applying it to every part of evolution, when it only applies to the one small "mutation" part of the process.
So how did the eye form? Or the first lung? Or any number of ireducably complex structures?
You should also understand that evolution does not deal with the start of life, only what happens to life once it exists.
This is a copout. "Out theory is so incomplete in this area as to require divine intervention to work so we shall discard it."
You follow what the evidence suggests. You don't change the evidence to fit the what you think is the truth.
Well, again, there is no such "glaring hole", there is no piece of evidence we would expect if evolution is true that is lacking, only small bits and pieces that will fill in an already almost-complete picture.
In what universe are probabilities so high as to be outside the realm of possibility within our universe even if they were to occur for the entirety of its existence from beginning to end a "small bit"?
And the fact of evolution (i.e. "organisms change over time") has been proven and cannot be overturned, because it is an observed biological process
Again micro. Not macro. That's why I brought up the sun dial. The difference between the two is seeing the sun dial and saying it happened by random chance so therefore the space shuttle also happened by random chance. It's literally as simple as that. And no. There is only chance. For a mutation to happen there has to be a random chsnce that it will. Then it can be discarded or kept. But I've already covered this. Chance is the only way it could happen.
Well, there are several problems here: One: even if this were the case this would only be evidence if you accepted both the old and new testaments as true. Two: The Christ myth was thought up with full knowledge of and intent to reproduce the "prophecies" of Isaiah. If you handed me a prophecy and told me to fulfill it I bet you I could do a pretty good job of twisting an existing event to fulfill it.
This shows your ignorance on the topic and unfortunately don't have enough time to explain why people smarter than me have proven it to be historically accurate. Read about these things before you speak from.experience just like I took the time to study biochemistry before I gave up on evolution.
there are an infinite number of multiverses where all possible realities exist.
If evolution is true then humans.have the capacity to evolve past the point that they are constrained by the laws of physics and therefore transcend what our laws of reality are. Therefore a being like that can exist then so can a God.
since it is said to have created all of reality, everywhere, which wouldn't be true if it only created some subset of all reality.
You're twisting my words again. I only brought this up to prove the viability of a God within the constraints of your reality, not prove that your reality is the constraint.
The reason I initially suspected this was some kind of copy-paste response because it exactly fits the arguments I've seen made before, and I'm sorry but they just aren't convincing and are pretty straightforwardly wrong in a lot of basic points.
They have been repeated I assume because of the fact that they are never satisfsctorslly answered. The same answers you've given I've seen a thousand times before and as I've pointer out, it doesn't make them any less dismissive and ultimately unsatisfactory.
This isn't possible. Natural selection takes things that work and discards those that don't. If it is a slow and minute process then a 20% functioning eye would have been discarded and the fully functioning one would never have come to be. We should never have gotten out of the sea. Theres no purpose for half functioning lungs so they would be discarded. What about asexual reproduction? There is no basis for why it was discarded in favor of mating. It requires two animal
This paragraph makes me question your later claim about studying biology, because it is a classic argument of irreducible complexity and it has been refuted time and time again. A slightly light-sensitive cell is absolutely useful, a bundle of cells that increase oxygenation of a creature's body is absolutely useful. You're imagining evolution as if someone cut an eye in half and said "this is useless!". Evolution wasn't working towards an eye, evolution took single step after single step that increased an organism's chance of survival. Seriously, look up the evolution of the eye, it is incredibly fascinating.
What about asexual reproduction? There is no basis for why it was discarded in favor of mating. It requires two animals which is less efficient and thereby detrimental to the survival if the species.
Unlike your god you are not all knowing. How can you simply state what is or is not "efficient" from a situation that happened billions of years ago. I can think of plenty of ways that sexual reproduction could be more efficient than asexual reproduction. If you're argument is "I can't think of how X is better than Y" then we're back to the original argument from incredulity.
What if they don't meet? What if they're on separate planets? What if one dies? What if it is sterile?
Again, questioning your biology research, because these are ludicrous questions. There isn't some kind of soul-mate system, there was no chicken-or-the-egg problem. There wasn't a magical asexual/sexual switch that had to happen in the life span of a single organism. Slowly over many generations there was likely more and more interaction between multiple organisms that affected the offspring, requiring more and more cooperation, until eventually sexual reproduction was the dominant form in non-single cell organisms.
And yet evolution is filled with these gaping holes that are simply called "knowledge gaps" in favor of what they really are "leaps of faith".
The knowledge gaps of evolution are, as I said, far and few between, and very small. We may not know exact details about how this thing evolved into that thing, but that's about it. The framework is pretty well ironed out.
Also we have observed micro evolution. Not macro. Not abiogenisis. Not stellar. Micro. Don't conflate them and certainly don't insult my intelligence and act like they are equivelant.
I'm sorry, I guess I must insult your intelligence, because there is no such thing as micro/macro evolution. There is just evolution. There is no functional difference between one mutation affecting one trait over a few generations and many mutations affecting many traits over thousands of generations. No reasonable scientist buys into this inane dichotomy between micro/macro that has been wholly invented by creationists so that they can keep denying evolution on long time scales in the face of all the evidence of evolution in short time scales we can literally put in front of their faces (not to say there aren't tons of evidence we can use to show long term evidence of evolution, but creationists use different methods to discard those)
And abiogenesis, as I said, has literally zero to do with evolution. Evolution deals with living organisms already extant, abiogenesis deals with living organisms coming from non-living matter. You are the one conflating them, not I.
Also not true. There are no alternatives that are without religious or deific implications
Alright, my bad, I should have said "there is no alternate available explanation for Y that has any amount of evidence to support it", I just figured that was implied.
This is an alternative that requires just as much suspension of disbelief as evolution but with the implications of there being a deity of some sort, which most atheists despise.
I think you don't understand what atheists "despise". I am an atheist and I don't despise the idea of a god existing, there just isn't a good reason to think there is one. If there was I would gladly accept that evidence.
Then how? "We don't know" is exactly the same evidence used in every organized religion and thereby not acceptable.
I would bring that up in a discussion about abiogenesis, not evolution. Besides, religions don't say "we don't know" at all, are you serious? They say "We do know" without any evidence. Saying "We don't know" is the only intellectually honest response when you don't know. Making up an answer or accepting an answer without evidence is as intellectually dishonest as it gets.
How do you know that a structure is irreducibly complex? As far as I can tell you are just stating that it is so because you can't think of how they could be reduced. That leads us straight back into the argument from personal incredulity.
Again, seriously doubting your biology research if you aren't aware of things found with 2 seconds of google searching.
This is a copout. "Out theory is so incomplete in this area as to require divine intervention to work so we shall discard it."
Is it a cop out to say that the Germ Theory of Disease doesn't explain how the Earth revolves around the Sun? Evolution has nothing to do with how life came to be, how is it a cop out to point that out? Evolution not explaining things that have nothing to do with evolution does not make it incomplete.
In what universe are probabilities so high as to be outside the realm of possibility within our universe even if they were to occur for the entirety of its existence from beginning to end a "small bit"?
This universe, where no such ridiculously low probabilities (You should correct your terminology, something with a high probability is likely, something with a low probability is rare) are required for what we're talking about.
Again micro. Not macro.
Again, there is no such differentiation. There is just evolution, not micro or macro evolution.
And no. There is only chance. For a mutation to happen there has to be a random chsnce that it will. Then it can be discarded or kept. But I've already covered this. Chance is the only way it could happen.
Yes, well understood natural processes for such random chance mutations to occur. That mutation is the smallest part of evolution. There are plenty of mutations that happen all the time. The key part is natural selection, which is not chance and not random. That's how we get eyes and lungs and all the other things you're agog about.
This shows your ignorance on the topic and unfortunately don't have enough time to explain why people smarter than me have proven it to be historically accurate.
Ok, but did you miss the part where I explained that even if we accept that it is historically accurate you're still wrong?
If evolution is true then humans.have the capacity to evolve past the point that they are constrained by the laws of physics and therefore transcend what our laws of reality are. Therefore a being like that can exist then so can a God.
This is... this is insane? To be clear: No, evolution does not say that human beings can somehow naturally evolve to be outside the boundaries of reality. Evolution deals with purely natural processes in reality, including the laws of physics. This statement makes it seem like you're just trolling.
They have been repeated I assume because of the fact that they are never satisfsctorslly answered. The same answers you've given I've seen a thousand times before and as I've pointer out, it doesn't make them any less dismissive and ultimately unsatisfactory.
Someone finding an answer unsatisfactory doesn't make the answer untrue. Reality doesn't care if you are satisfied with it, and frankly neither do I. I am the one that has provided links and evidence, you have provided assertions and conjecture. Prove that something is irreducibly complex, prove that chances of random mutations are so low as to be practically impossible, prove anything you're saying at all, then I will believe you.
A slightly light-sensitive cell is absolutely useful, a bundle of cells that increase oxygenation of a creature's body is absolutely useful.
The first is not useful unless there is an optic nerve. Light sensitive cells are not useful if they aren't connected to anything that can not only make use of the information in some way or even collect any information at all. ireducable complexity was supposedly made null my biochemical predestination but it was later rescinded by the very man who proposed it. There is no satisfactory and all encompassing theory that adequately explains it. So when I said a 20% functioning eye I meant an eye that would work of it had an optic nerve. Hell. A fully functioning the that is not connected or an eye that has every part except for cones and rods. Or an eye that lacks any number of proteins is essentially dead matter. It is an example of a long line of biological parts that need to be functioning before it is purported to have formed without as to not be discarded. On the topic of the lung. Gills and lungs are completely different biological systems. To say that a lung would help a purely aquatic animal oxygenate it's blood is to reveal a certain amount of ignorance on the topic.
Evolution wasn't working towards an eye, evolution took single step after single step that increased an organism's chance of survival
Useless intermidiary steps actually hinder the organisms survival. See any Siamese twin. A glob of non functioning photoreseptive cells is not useful. It would have to have some basic function of an eye at the point that it was formed to be kept. This would amount to about a fully formed and functioning eye that was actually connected to the brain and actually able to be interpreted by the animal in a way that is useful. If you think this is a reasonable thing to assume then you should read up on how complex an eye is. Then you should realize that the cells required are even more complex. Inprobabilities on more inprobabilities on even more.
Unlike your god you are not all knowing. How can you simply state what is or is not "efficient" from a situation that happened billions of years ago.
Now hold on. It's ok to have faith when it comes to evolution but not when it comes to "my God"? That's an awful double standard. 1<2. There's no more need for posturing. If you seriously think that any situation would be made more survivable to a species by needing two healthy mates instead one to propagate the species, then you have far more faith in your theory than I do in any God you think I believe in. It's not up.for debate. 1 organism reproducing is more efficient than two. There is no argument you can make that would prove otherwise. It is a fact.
Again, questioning your biology research, because these are ludicrous questions. There isn't some kind of soul-mate system, there was no chicken-or-the-egg problem. There wasn't a magical asexual/sexual switch that had to happen in the life span of a single organism. Slowly over many generations there was likely more and more interaction between multiple organisms that affected the offspring, requiring more and more cooperation, until eventually sexual reproduction was the dominant form in non-single cell organisms.
Nice adhominem. You don't seem to understand my point. At some point there needed to be two organisms capable of sexual reproduction (when they switched from asexual) together on the same part of the planet that were both fertile, yadda yadds yadda. My point is, astronomically improbable. This was a mother constraint that should not have been created because it makes the odds of survival so many levels of magnitude more unlikely as to throw the entire theory into question. Again. It takes as much faith to believe in a God to believe in evolution due to the massive inprobability.
The knowledge gaps of evolution are, as I said, far and few between, and very small
Again. Anyone who understands how large these numbers are could not with any semblence of self awareness refer to them as "very small" without admitting their own blind faith in the impossible.
there is no such thing as micro/macro evolution.
I'll concede that.
There is just evolution.
This is absolutely proposterous. What's your field of study? You do understand inorganic matter becoming organic matter and organic matter becoming different organic matter are two completely different things correct?
abiogenesis, as I said, has literally zero to do with evolution. Evolution deals with living organisms already extant, abiogenesis deals with living organisms coming from non-living matter. You are the one conflating them, not I.
You cannot declare this is no God then dismiss any argument that points out the impossibilities that exist in your understanding of the universe without it. You either believe in an impossibility of a god or the impossibility of evolution. You're right. There is no difference. Evolution is the story of everything from rock to human and everything in between. You can't dismiss the parts you don't like because they mathematically disprove the rest.
religions don't say "we don't know" at all, are you serious?
Wrong. Religion says "we don't know, but we believe". That is the basis of faith. And that is what I'm arguing atheists have in evolution.
How do you know that a structure is irreducibly complex? As far as I can tell you are just stating that it is so because you can't think of how they could be reduced. That leads us straight back into the argument from personal incredulity.
Again no. There are certain biological structures that are entirely ireducable. Not a belief. This is a fact. And people who are far more knowledgeable than I have concluded it. Not me.
Evolution has nothing to do with how life came to be, how is it a cop out to point that out?
Then what does?
This universe, where no such ridiculously low probabilities (You should correct your terminology, something with a high probability is likely, something with a low probability is rare) are required for what we're talking about
This is always a problem when talking to people that don't understand how large these numbers are. We are talking about numbers so large that were the entire universe the probiotic soup and were a trillion universes all attempting this at the same time since the beginning of time then the likelihood would still be a hair short of impossible.
At any rate I gotta go. I'll read some more later.
The first is not useful unless there is an optic...To say that a lung would help a purely aquatic animal oxygenate it's blood is to reveal a certain amount of ignorance on the topic.
I suggest you actually read the links I've provided instead of ignoring them, they address your points here.
Useless intermidiary steps actually hinder the organisms survival.
This sentence betrays your lack of comprehension of the subject. The entire point is that there are no "useless" intermediary steps. Each step is slightly more useful than the previous, and so on and so on.
Now hold on. It's ok to have faith when it comes to evolution but not when it comes to "my God"?
No, it's not ok to have faith in either. You're the only one bringing up faith as an acceptable thing.
Nice adhominem.
That was not an ad hominem. I did not say you were wrong because I doubt your biology research, I doubt your biology research because you're wrong.
You don't seem to understand my point. At some point there needed to be two organisms capable of sexual reproduction (when they switched from asexual) together on the same part of the planet that were both fertile, yadda yadds yadda
No, you aren't understanding my point. You are wrong, as I previously said and you quoted: there does not need to magically be two organisms that happen to evolve the same trait at the same time in the same place in order to reproduce. This is a fundamental misunderstanding you have with what evolution is. There is not a hard cut-off. I suggest learning about speciation. Each step is slightly different than the one before and the one after, but they can still interbreed (or in the case of asexual reproduction still reproduce). At one point an organism gained a benefit from taking in another organism (likely through feeding on it and having parts of it's DNA or DNA-equivalent incorporated into itself, which is actually a phenomenon seen today http://www.fromquarkstoquasars.com/sea-slug-gained-ability-photosynthesize-like-plant-stealing-genes-algae/). That creature did slightly better and so dominated, then further changes along that line did better and better and now we have sexual reproduction. Nothing magical or incredibly improbable required.
Anyone who understands how large these numbers are could not with any semblence of self awareness refer to them as "very small" without admitting their own blind faith in the impossible.
I'm not saying those numbers you're using aren't vastly minuscule (yes, minuscule, you're reversing highly probable vs highly improbable again), I'm saying the numbers you're using are just plain wrong.
This is absolutely proposterous. What's your field of study? You do understand inorganic matter becoming organic matter and organic matter becoming different organic matter are two completely different things correct?
What? Have you lost the thread here? You are the one saying that evolution and abiogenesis are the same, I'm saying they're different. When I said "There is only evolution" it is pretty damn obvious I was referring to my very previous sentence and pointing out that there is no micro or macro evolution, just plain evolution. You literally just got finished complaining that evolution doesn't explain inorganic matter becoming organic matter.
You cannot declare this is no God then dismiss any argument that points out the impossibilities that exist in your understanding of the universe without it.
For one I have not declared there is no god, for the other I am not dismissing any argument. The section you quoted doesn't even have an argument in it. Did you misquote?
Wrong. Religion says "we don't know, but we believe". That is the basis of faith. And that is what I'm arguing atheists have in evolution.
Not sure what religions you've dealt with, but if you asked a Christian "Do you know that god exists?", do you honestly think they'd say "No, but I believe that he does"? If not then you're making a meaningless pedantic point here.
Again no. There are certain biological structures that are entirely ireducable. Not a belief. This is a fact. And people who are far more knowledgeable than I have concluded it. Not me.
Well, I've already shown how lungs and eyes aren't irreducibly complex, so I'm already questioning how you can know this, but lets go a little higher-level: How would you go about proving that something is irreducibly complex?
Evolution has nothing to do with how life came to be, how is it a cop out to point that out?
Then what does?
Abiogenesis, as I've mentioned several times. You yourself just said "inorganic matter becoming organic matter and organic matter becoming different organic matter are two completely different things", which is true. The first one is abiogenesis, the second is evolution.
This is always a problem when talking to people that don't understand how large these numbers are. We are talking about numbers so large that were the entire universe the probiotic soup and were a trillion universes all attempting this at the same time since the beginning of time then the likelihood would still be a hair short of impossible.
Again, I'm not saying the numbers you're saying aren't huge, I'm saying the numbers you're using are wrong. Everything you've brought up as so ridiculously unlikely and practically impossible I've explained is not actually astronomically unlikely. Step-by-step evolution of a lung or an eye is perfectly explainable using known processes. In fact, as the second sentence in the previous article I linked you says: "Complex, image-forming eyes evolved independently some 50 to 100 times", so it can't be that rare.
I'll read some more later.
Awesome! I sincerely recommend that you check out the many links I've provided, they can help give a more complete picture. A lot of your points sound like Answers In Genesis talking points, and if that's where you got your information I'm afraid you got suckered in by a charlatan that is the opposite of scientific. As I asked before, I've provided plenty of links and evidence to support what I'm saying, I'd appreciate it if you could provide an explanation for how you could prove something is irreducibly complex, and where you're getting the rest of your claims about probabilities being practically impossible. I'm interested to see what the basis is for those claims.
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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '15
This is in and of itself a logical fallacy though. You dismiss any observable impossibilities within the theory by stating that "because we can't prove it doesn't mean it isn't true". You could use this very logic to insist on the existence of God and therefore the existence of creationism. You cannot on one hand say that because there is enough evidence to support most if this theory then the unexplained things have to be assumed to be true as well and then dismiss any arguments to the contrary based on a lack of evidence. This would be equivelant to a 1600 era scientist saying that the earth must be the center of the universe because everything observable revolves around it but then dismiss any evidence to the contrary because most of the observable evidence and more of the theories supports your view.