Atheism as a Faith: The (Hopefully) Final Debate

Wicked Willow

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Personally, I'd say that "supernatural" is a pretty nonsensical concept.
Anything that interferes directly with our universe is natural by default. It may follow natural principles we do not comprehend at this point, even seemingly "break" rules that we've considered correct up until that point (as General Relativity did in relation to Newtonian Physics, and Quantum Mechanics did WRT to pretty much everything, at least on the sub-atomic level) - but it cannot be anything other than natural.

Looking at the history of the term and its usage, it seems to me that it has always been applied when dealing with a phenomenon or principle that wasn't correctly understood at that time: floods, epidemics, the movements of heavenly bodies, even monetary inflation.
 
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Wicked Willow

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:thumbsup:. Well said.
The day primordial slime spontaneously turns into modern Man or finches cease to be finches overnight will be the day every serious biologist will have to stop believing in evolution. Raze just knocked over a straw man.
 
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Greg1234

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The day primordial slime spontaneously turns into modern Man or finches cease to be finches overnight will be the day every serious biologist will have to stop believing in evolution. Raze just knocked over a straw man.
Nobody said overnight. We are not waiting for evidence for Darwinism, we have evidence against chance.
 
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Wicked Willow

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Nobody said overnight. We are not waiting for evidence for Darwinism, we have evidence against chance.
It needn't be overnight. Even within ten thousand years, such a result would directly contradict evolutionary biology, genetics, and the fossil record.
 
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SithDoughnut

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Nobody said overnight. We are not waiting for evidence for Darwinism, we have evidence against chance.

Then why do you insist on hiding it instead of giving it to the greater scientific community? If you have evidence against it then you really should let everyone know so we can recitify our mistakes.
 
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Eudaimonist

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It needn't be overnight. Even within ten thousand years, such a result would directly contradict evolutionary biology, genetics, and the fossil record.

Seriously. That would be a disaster for current evolutionary theory of, ah, Biblical proportions.


eudaimonia,

Mark
 
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Wicked Willow

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Besides, new species *have* arisen in historical times:

- A new species of mosquito, isolated in London's Underground, has speciated from Culex pipiens (Byrne and Nichols 1999; Nuttall 1998).

- Several new species of plants have arisen via polyploidy (when the chromosome count multiplies by two or more) (de Wet 1971). One example is Primula kewensis (Newton and Pellew 1929).

- Rhagoletis pomonella, the apple maggot fly, is undergoing sympatric speciation. Its native host in North America is Hawthorn (Crataegus spp.), but in the mid-1800s, a new population formed on introduced domestic apples (Malus pumila). The two races are kept partially isolated by natural selection (Filchak et al. 2000).

- The mosquito Anopheles gambiae shows incipient speciation between its populations in northwestern and southeastern Africa (Fanello et al. 2003; Lehmann et al. 2003).

- Silverside fish show incipient speciation between marine and estuarine populations (Beheregaray and Sunnucks 2001).

- In several Canadian lakes, which originated in the last 10,000 years following the last ice age, stickleback fish have diversified into separate species for shallow and deep water (Schilthuizen 2001, 146-151).

- Cichlids in Lake Malawi and Lake Victoria have diversified into hundreds of species. Parts of Lake Malawi which originated in the nineteenth century have species indigenous to those parts (Schilthuizen 2001, 166-176).

- A Mimulus species adapted for soils high in copper exists only on the tailings of a copper mine that did not exist before 1859 (Macnair 1989).

And these are just a few examples.
 
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Greg1234

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Then why do you insist on hiding it instead of giving it to the greater scientific community?
In progress...

If you have evidence against it then you really should let everyone know so we can recitify our mistakes.
Science does not belong to you. The "rectifying" is actually the rejection of chance. Not the clarification of atheism. Nice try though.
 
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JJWhite

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Personally, I'd say that "supernatural" is a pretty nonsensical concept.
Anything that interferes directly with our universe is natural by default. It may follow natural principles we do not comprehend at this point, even seemingly "break" rules that we've considered correct up until that point (as General Relativity did in relation to Newtonian Physics, and Quantum Mechanics did WRT to pretty much everything, at least on the sub-atomic level) - but it cannot be anything other than natural.

Looking at the history of the term and its usage, it seems to me that it has always been applied when dealing with a phenomenon or principle that wasn't correctly understood at that time: floods, epidemics, the movements of heavenly bodies, even monetary inflation.

Before he parted whatever sea it was he parted, the Bible describes Moses and his brother Aaron delivering 10 plagues on the people of Egypt. The Nile turns to blood, all the fish die, frogs are brought forth abundantly, and so on. Drawing on theology, Egyptology, and biology, epidemiologist John Marr developed a "domino theory" to explain each of the 10 plagues in order. Marr believes the plagues were a series of natural disasters and diseases triggered by a bloom of water-borne organisms called dinoflagellates. The dinoflagellates turned the Nile red and killed the frog-eating fish, which in turn caused a population explosion among frogs. The tainted water eventually killed the frogs, causing lice and flies to run rampant, which lead to a number of animal diseases (including African horse sickness) and an outbreak of boils (fancy glanders). This reign of disaster and disease continued through hail, locusts (Schistocerca gregaria, to be precise), and sandstorms until the death of the firstborn sons, which Marr thinks was caused by grain infected with mycotoxins. Others, building on Marr's domino theory, argue that the plagues were triggered by the eruption of the Greek island of Santorini, causing a string of disasters such as those that occurred at Lake Nyos, Cameroon, in 1986.

AND...

In The Miracles of Exodus, Humphreys writes that "a natural explanation of the events of the Exodus doesn't to my mind make them any less miraculous. … What made certain events miraculous was their timing."

(selections cut and pasted from Scientific explanations for the parting of the Red Sea, the 10 plagues, and the burning bush. - By Michael Lukas - Slate Magazine)
 
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JohnCR

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In progress...

Science does not belong to you. The "rectifying" is actually the rejection of chance. Not the clarification of atheism. Nice try though.

I think when he said "our," he meant evolutionists. A good majority of scientists agree with evolution.
 
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SithDoughnut

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In progress...

I look forward to reading the peer reviewed paper in future.

Science does not belong to you. The "rectifying" is actually the rejection of chance. Not the clarification of atheism. Nice try though.
Yes I know that. When I say 'our' I refer to everyone who currently agrees with the Theory of Evolution. I am one of them, therefore I use the first person plural. At no point did I mention atheism.
 
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Greg1234

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I look forward to reading the peer reviewed paper in future.
You may read it at any time. In fact, you may start with any paper. There are thousands empirically showing random mutations not building a heart or a limb or even close.
Yes I know that. When I say 'our' I refer to everyone who currently agrees with the Theory of Evolution. I am one of them, therefore I use the first person plural. At no point did I mention atheism.
Actually, "our" is based on the assumption that the evidence against Darwinism will rectify Darwinism or the assertion that bacteria can turn into men. It rectifies science.
 
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Wicked Willow

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Greg1234, do you think that the "arguments" you have brought up have been insufficiently addressed or taken into account by scientists?

I assure you that any genuine scientist will be perfectly willing to test any but the most absurd hypothesis, and to repeat any experiment. Of course, if you start with unfalsifiable hypotheses ("Goddidit. Case closed."), there's not much that can be tested OR falsified, you see?

"Irreducible complexity" dealing with the eye and so forth have been addressed a long time ago; I believe that argument was even brought up when Darwin was still around, and evolutionary theory still in its infancy.
It has been soundly refuted, even back then.
The same goes for your objections to random mutations and so forth.

I'd encourage you to take a look at the data that's been collected by the TalkOrigin archive. Lots and lots of peer-reviewed data, and a serious effort to collect Creationist claims and address these challenges objectively.
 
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SithDoughnut

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You may read it at any time. In fact, you may start with any paper. There are thousands empirically showing random mutations not building a heart or a limb or even close.

Obviously. If that happened, the theory of evolution would be destroyed.

Actually, "our" is based on the assumption that the evidence against Darwinism will rectify Darwinism or the assertion that bacteria can turn into men. It rectifies science.

No it isn't. I wrote the post, trust me on this. It's a first person plural pronoun, not some kind of hidden message or metaphor.
 
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Wicked Willow

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It points out you created a false dichotomy, trying to separate G-d from modern biology. It just doesn't work.
Eh?
The false dichotomy is created by creationists who insist that you cannot accept evolution and be a "real" Christian at the same time. I pointed out that this is not the case, and that Creationism is a specifically American oddity that exists only on the lunatic fringe of religion elsewhere.
Honestly, people throughout the world make fun of stuff like the "Creation Museum". It's embarrassing.
 
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ToHoldNothing

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Evolution is something that is ALWAYS associated with Atheism.

I'm not sure how many Atheists I need to ask before I can just accept this as a conclusion.

Depends on the degree of atheism you speak of and what form of evolution you're referring to.

And you'd have to ask virtually every self described atheist, which unfortunately would count me out, since I self describe as apatheist, not atheist, unless you would try to conflate the two
 
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Glass*Soul

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I'm not interested in accepting logical fallacies as truth XDenax. Sorry.

Evolution is something that is ALWAYS associated with Atheism.

I'm not sure how many Atheists I need to ask before I can just accept this as a conclusion.

The evidence for the Theory of Evolution is so convincing and its use as a tool for understanding the world so well-refined that it takes a deep emotional attachment to a religion that deems it taboo to prevent its acceptance. This is why you find it so many atheists and some Christians answering that they accept it.
 
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