Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Anthony Edgar]

Well, after that answer of yours, there is no point to this, is there?

Just as a matter of curiosity, would you mind telling me which form of theism you once practised?

-- Updated October 30th, 2016, 4:11 am to add the following --

The usual twist around. Another theist own goal, demonstrating rank scientific naivete.

What do you think that billions of years of constant change could produce? Consider how much change can occur in ten years.

Given that "replicating biological machines" have only been in existence for a relatively short time in the solar system, that would suggest that they came from something simpler, yes? Something less ordered - thus more chaotic. Those forms too must have come from simpler, less ordered forms.

Do you disagree with any of that?

I would say that in billions of years, dead matter could achieve about as much as a dead human could - absolutely nothing!    Human remains have been exhumed after periods of much longer than "ten years" and they were found to have achieved very little. 

On the other hand, if I were writing a science-fiction novel, I could dream up all sorts of fantastic nonsense about what mindless atoms could achieve in billions of years.  Some folks are so enamoured of science-fiction that they might even adopt some of my nonsense as "fact".
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Attributing magical creative powers to mere matter fits the Catholic Church's definition of "superstition".  (No wonder so many atheists hate Catholicism!) It seems to me that a lot of what is served up as "science" today is really nature worship in disguise.  The Revenge of Paganism.
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In light of what is now known about the staggering complexity of DNA and cell architecture, the thought of even the simplest organism forming as a result of chance is an inexcusable absurdity that is even less scientifically mature than the spontaneous generation beliefs of the nineteenth century (150 years ago, a scientist could at least plead ignorance as a defense).
Worse still, the thought of an organism that ALSO REPRODUCES forming as a result of chance adds up to absurdity-squared; a laughable gem of pure science-fiction.  

And since when does a mindless machine (ie, the alleged first primordial cell) reproduce?

[Sy Borg]

What do you think that billions of years of constant change could produce? Consider how much change can occur in ten years.

Given that "replicating biological machines" have only been in existence for a relatively short time in the solar system, that would suggest that they came from something simpler, yes? Something less ordered - thus more chaotic. Those forms too must have come from simpler, less ordered forms.

Do you disagree with any of that?

I would say that in billions of years, dead matter could achieve about as much as a dead human could - absolutely nothing!    Human remains have been exhumed after periods of much longer than "ten years" and they were found to have achieved very little. 

Ten years :lol:

Do you understand how large one billion is? If you counted from one to one billion, you would be counting for almost a century.

On the other hand, if I were writing a science-fiction novel, I could dream up all sorts of fantastic nonsense about what mindless atoms could achieve in billions of years.  Some folks are so enamoured of science-fiction that they might even adopt some of my nonsense as "fact".

It seems rather rich to speak of "fiction" given that you uncritically believe middle eastern Iron Age mythology invented by people who believed pathogens and bad weather to be the work of evil spirits.

You don't appear to understand enough about the physical or biological sciences to make any form of valid criticism. While one does not need to be an expert, one does need to be aware of the very basics and what kind of evidence has been found.

I can understand theists who claim that subjectivity or awareness itself is God, or that their deity is believed to be within, but questioning such an established theory (not hypothesis) that is so strongly proved via so many sources for so long, and which makes perfect logical sense as opposed to fantastical primitive mythology. There may be mistakes in assumptions made by evolutionary biologists in terms of the fine detail, but the general theory is not in question.

[Fooloso4]

Anthony Edgar:

I don't believe life started as a single-cell organism and evolved into more complex organisms. I believe that all creation took place in six days, as per the book of Genesis.

But the Catholic Church has officially acknowledged that biological evolution is a fact.

[Vijaydevani]

Anthony Edgar:

I don't believe life started as a single-cell organism and evolved into more complex organisms. I believe that all creation took place in six days, as per the book of Genesis.

But the Catholic Church has officially acknowledged that biological evolution is a fact.

Doesn't matter. The church is wrong. The Bible says so.

[Fooloso4]

Vijaydevani:

Doesn't matter. The church is wrong. The Bible says so.

I only brought it up because I think Edgar says he is a Catholic. Creates quite the dilemma doesn’t it?

[Sy Borg]

Vijaydevani:

Doesn't matter. The church is wrong. The Bible says so.

I only brought it up because I think Edgar says he is a Catholic. Creates quite the dilemma doesn’t it?

The Bible didn't even say so. The creation passage in Genesis is a decent metaphor from intuitive people who didn't have scientific language with which to express those concepts. I suspect that the writers of these passages would be shocked by the mindless literal interpretations by modern religious people.

[Anthony Edgar]

In just one billion years the surface of the Earth will be dry, the oceans boiled away.

Even if this were possible or turns out to be true, it does nothing to support your theory that dead matter can produce life.

If humans evolve for another billion years, the result would be as different from humans as humans are from bacteria (Martin Reeve, cosmologist).

This is pure speculation. Unverified scientific theories convince me of nothing; theories that can NEVER be verified probably don't even belong in the realm of science.   

Note that it only took half a century to refine computers from rudimentary machines dwarfed in capacity by the average current mobile phone to supercomputers that can crunch a brainlike 90,000 trillion calculations per second. Given the above rapid development by humans, it's fair to say that humans are far more powerful and effective than the God of Abrahamic primitives of the Iron Age, who took 13.8 billion years to achieve comparable concentrations of processing power.

Computers can perform certain tasks more accurately and faster than humans themselves (that's why we built them), but the human brain is capable of astounding feats that machines will never be capable of.  Can a machine fall in love?  Or dream?  Or imagine?  Or compose a symphony?  Or write a novel?  Or appreciate beauty?  Or be kind, or compassionate or feel empathy?  Or develop scientific laws that help describe the physical world?  Or figure out how to split the atom?  Or make elaborate plans for the future?  Or discuss philosophy?  

I am assuming/hoping that you are not a young Earth creationist, abiding by Bishop James Ussher's confused calculations.

I'm not a young earth creationist, but an old earth creationist. I believe that Magic Sky Daddy created all flora and fauna on earth in six days.  

Why bother with "nonsense" like the multiverse and quantum loop gravity when the universe was obviously created by a giant magic spirit man in the sky who is entirely focused on us Earthlings?

I'm all for scientific inquiry - that's how science advances.  But I don't accept unverified scientific theories and am continually amazed by the credulity of highly intelligent people who do.  
I can't see any value in scientific theories that have no practical use; and debate for the sake of debate isn't my cup of tea.  Yarns about the multiverse and quantum loop gravity interest me as much as yarns about Little Green Men in Flying Saucers. 

-- Updated October 31st, 2016, 4:00 am to add the following --

Read "The selfish Gene". Although the guy is a rabid atheist ...

You got that right!  Dawkins has also seriously suggested that aliens may have seeded the earth with its first life forms (see his interview with Ben Stein on Youtube.  I assume Richard's alien-panspermia theory is a result of his acknowlegement that abiogenesis is next to impossible.  

Francis Crick resorted to the aliens-seeders theory also, after concluding that DNA is too complex to have formed as a result of chance.  The absurd belief that life forms from non-life has now lead to an absurd belief in aliens.  And they call this nonsense "science".  Wow.

Also look at how brutal and violent all animal life in nature is. Some of the brutality is so severe it can take your breath away. If an intelligent designer did this, then you can be sure that it has a very sadistic streak.

In the Bible, God promises that one day,  "The wolf will dwell with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the kid, and the calf and the lion and the yearling together, and a little child shall lead them.  The bear and the cow shall feed, and their young shall lie down together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox"  (Isaiah 11:6-7).
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Other than that, I've noticed that, like a lot of atheists, you are quick to condemn God for all the horrible things in the world, but never give God credit for any of the nice things in the world.   Your approach seems decidedly illogical, unbalanced and, dare I say, unfair.   
Or is it that God is responsible for all the bad things, but not responsible for any of the good things?  If so, how can that be?

[Dolphin42]

Anthony Edgar:

I only accept scientific theories that can be verified by observation or experimentation. I'm not missing out on anything by using these criteria, as they serve to filter out the theories that have no practical use.

That sounds like a sensible policy. If a theory does not generate any predicted observations then it clearly can't be falsified or verified.

But what, in your view, counts as verification by observation or experimentation? Suppose I have a theory which states that a particular set of events happened at some time in the past, but are not currently happening and are not expected to happen in the future? Suppose my theory is based on evidence that exists in the present. It could be any set of past events, really, from the birth of Henry VIII to the initial formation of the Himalayan mountain range to the speciation that led to our divergence from our common ancestor with chimpanzees. All of these events happened in the past, will not happen in the future and are verified by examining evidence that exists now and deciding what is the most likely explanation for that currently existing evidence. The state of affairs now is what leads us to suspect that they did in fact happen, even though we can never go back in time to witness them first hand.

Do you count this kind of verification as valid? Or do you think that scientific theories should confine themselves purely to events that can directly reproduced in the present and future? Do you believe that Henry VIII existed? Why?

[Sy Borg]

In just one billion years the surface of the Earth will be dry, the oceans boiled away.

Even if this were possible or turns out to be true, it does nothing to support your theory that dead matter can produce life.

The life cycles of main sequence stars like our Sun are not hypothetical. So your comment that "if it were possible" (that the oceans boil away) demonstrates that you do not even accept prosaic scientific information, let alone speculative ones, and nor do you check for correctness if you have doubts.

Re: Of course life comes from - "dead" matter - which is not nearly so "dead" as you assume. Geology is not "dead", just extremely slow, giving fast paced biological organisms a sense that they are entirely inert and we are entirely animated. In truth, it's just a matter of degree and, with life, the Earth transforms more rapidly.

Note that it only took half a century to refine computers from rudimentary machines dwarfed in capacity by the average current mobile phone to supercomputers that can crunch a brainlike 90,000 trillion calculations per second. Given the above rapid development by humans, it's fair to say that humans are far more powerful and effective than the God of Abrahamic primitives of the Iron Age, who took 13.8 billion years to achieve comparable concentrations of processing power.

Computers can perform certain tasks more accurately and faster than humans themselves (that's why we built them), but the human brain is capable of astounding feats that machines will never be capable of.  Can a machine fall in love?  Or dream?  Or imagine?  Or compose a symphony?  Or write a novel?  Or appreciate beauty?  Or be kind, or compassionate or feel empathy?  Or develop scientific laws that help describe the physical world?  Or figure out how to split the atom?  Or make elaborate plans for the future?  Or discuss philosophy?

Let's see what life can produce in another 13.8 billion years. All that's needed is one civilisation somewhere in the entire universe to have enough survivors of formative sustainability and conflict issues (as we are facing today) so that a species can advance to the point where they can colonise other worlds and what they would be able to achieve in 13.8 billion years (given what we achieved with computing in just 50) will outstrip everything we know of. Probabilities are strongly with this.

I am assuming/hoping that you are not a young Earth creationist, abiding by Bishop James Ussher's confused calculations.

I'm not a young earth creationist, but an old earth creationist. I believe that Magic Sky Daddy created all flora and fauna on earth in six days.

If the ancients were alive today I suspect they'd be amused at how their words have been interpreted by so-called "modern" people. It's akin to future "advanced" beings reading material about "voracious black holes" and believing they were giant beasts in the sky.

Why bother with "nonsense" like the multiverse and quantum loop gravity when the universe was obviously created by a giant magic spirit man in the sky who is entirely focused on us Earthlings?

I'm all for scientific inquiry - that's how science advances.  But I don't accept unverified scientific theories and am continually amazed by the credulity of highly intelligent people who do.  

No, you are not even a bit "all for scientific inquiry". Quite the opposite, as evidenced by your dismissal the practical work of cosmologists in studying our star. It seems more like you don't accept any scientific theories that are inconvenient to you. Before accepting or rejecting hypotheses, it helps to try to understand them first.

I can't see any value in scientific theories that have no practical use; and debate for the sake of debate isn't my cup of tea.  Yarns about the multiverse and quantum loop gravity interest me as much as yarns about Little Green Men in Flying Saucers. 

Do you actually know why the multiverse and QLG hypotheses were proposed? It doesn't sound like it. Little green men are not a scientific hypothesis BTW.

[Iapetus]

Reply to Anthony Edgar:

(In response to Vijaydevani) Other than that, I've noticed that, like a lot of atheists, you are quick to condemn God for all the horrible things in the world, but never give God credit for any of the nice things in the world. Your approach seems decidedly illogical, unbalanced and, dare I say, unfair.
Or is it that God is responsible for all the bad things, but not responsible for any of the good things? If so, how can that be?

I have responded in detail to several of your previous accusations about atheists and their apparent lack of logic but you have assiduously avoided a reasoned response. Nonetheless, I'll give it another go.

If an atheist, by definition, does not accept the claims to existence of a god or God, then how do you imagine that they would either condemn or give credit to a God in which they do not believe?

All things bright and beautiful,

All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
The Lord God made them all.

A song first published in 1848. A claim about God. Is this logical? Balanced? Fair? If somebody responded that, if ‘The Lord God’ made bright and beautiful things, then perhaps ‘he’ also made unpleasant and nasty things, would this make it illogical or unfair? Incidentally, the third verse goes:

The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them high and lowly,
And ordered their estate.

Logical? Balanced? Fair?

If you are asserting a lack of logic, then where do you think that arises? In the claim that ‘God is good’ or in an atheist questioning of this claim?

-- Updated 31 Oct 2016, 18:12 to add the following --

Reply to Anthony Edgar:

(In response to Vijaydevani) Other than that, I've noticed that, like a lot of atheists, you are quick to condemn God for all the horrible things in the world, but never give God credit for any of the nice things in the world. Your approach seems decidedly illogical, unbalanced and, dare I say, unfair.
Or is it that God is responsible for all the bad things, but not responsible for any of the good things? If so, how can that be?

I have responded in detail to several of your previous accusations about atheists and their apparent lack of logic but you have assiduously avoided a reasoned response. Nonetheless, I'll give it another go.

If an atheist, by definition, does not accept the claims to existence of a god or God, then how do you imagine that they would either condemn or give credit to a God in which they do not believe?

All things bright and beautiful,

All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
The Lord God made them all.

A song first published in 1848. A claim about God. Is this logical? Balanced? Fair? If somebody responded that, if ‘The Lord God’ made bright and beautiful things, then perhaps ‘he’ also made unpleasant and nasty things, would this make it illogical or unfair? Incidentally, the third verse goes:

The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them high and lowly,
And ordered their estate.

Logical? Balanced? Fair?

If you are asserting a lack of logic, then where do you think that arises? In the claim that ‘God is good’ or in an atheist questioning of this claim?

[Anthony Edgar]

It seems rather rich to speak of "fiction" given that you uncritically believe middle eastern Iron Age mythology invented by people who believed pathogens and bad weather to be the work of evil spirits.

Uncritically? lol

If I observe the world around me and come to the conclusion that matter per se cannot be responsible for its wonders, then I have no choice but to conclude that there must be a Magic Sky Daddy who is.   Many scientists reject the idea of a Magic Sky Daddy and, determined to not let a divine foot in the door, believe in Magic Rocks instead, which I regard as foolish superstition.   So I'm deeply suspicious of any theories that these deluded rock-worshippers come up with.  

Am I be interested in their ireelevant musings about how the universe made itself?  Not at all.  
What am I missing out on if I remain largely ignorant of their useless theories? Not a thing.
Am I be interested in scientific ideas that have a practical use?  Yes ... not least because practically-useful science is necessarily based on ideas that are correct.  A false scientific idea will never produce a practical use.

I can understand theists who claim that subjectivity or awareness itself is God, or that their deity is believed to be within, but questioning such an established theory (not hypothesis) that is so strongly proved via so many sources for so long, and which makes perfect logical sense as opposed to fantastical primitive mythology. There may be mistakes in assumptions made by evolutionary biologists in terms of the fine detail, but the general theory is not in question.

The general theory of evolution is not in question for someone who rejects creation.  Once creation is rejected, it's would be quite easy to accept evolution as a "fact", since there is probably no alternative idea.   Once creation is rejected and evolution is accepted as a general theory, one then looks around for explanations as to how evolution happened.
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-- Updated November 1st, 2016, 3:51 am to add the following --

Vijaydevani:


(Nested quote removed.)


I only brought it up because I think Edgar says he is a Catholic. Creates quite the dilemma doesn’t it?

The Bible didn't even say so. The creation passage in Genesis is a decent metaphor from intuitive people who didn't have scientific language with which to express those concepts. I suspect that the writers of these passages would be shocked by the mindless literal interpretations by modern religious people.

In the first chapter of Genesis, the description of each day of the six days of creation is accompanied by "And there was evening and there was morning".  It's entirely reasonable to conclude that the author included these words to convey the idea that each day was a period of literally 24 hours.  It's also entirely reasonable to conclude that anyone reading those words in ancient times would have interpreted these words exactly that way.  

Furthermore, nowhere in the Old Testament are the words, "evening" (used 142 times) and "morning" (used 218 times), used in any sense other than literal.

In Exodus 20:8-11, Yahweh sets out the requirement for a seven-day week - "Six days you shall labour and do all your work; but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work."  Yahweh then gives his reason for this seven day week:  "for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day."  Such verses strongly support the idea that the six days of creation described in Genesis 1 were literally of 24-hours duration.

I suspect that the writers of these passages would be shocked that anyone would interpret them any other way.  Moreover, the 24-hour interpretation was always the orthodox Christian position ... until certain dopey Christians attempted to put a square peg in a round hole by combining Scripture with Darwinism. 

So I would suggest that your views on the literal six-days interpretation are somewhat off the mark.

-- Updated November 1st, 2016, 4:02 am to add the following --

Do you actually know why the multiverse and QLG hypotheses were proposed? It doesn't sound like it.

I admit that I don't know much about the multiverse and quantum loop gravity. Look, I tried, but I just couldn't get into the whole Star Wars thing.   Kids movies don't do it for me. But I do know that Darth Vader came up with QLG and that Pricess Leah thought it was nonsense, hence the friction between them. The multiverse was first proposed in Star Trek by Mr. Spock, so Stars Wars plagiarised it.

-- Updated November 1st, 2016, 4:10 am to add the following --

Anthony Edgar:

I don't believe life started as a single-cell organism and evolved into more complex organisms. I believe that all creation took place in six days, as per the book of Genesis.

But the Catholic Church has officially acknowledged that biological evolution is a fact.

There are many high ranking Catholics who acknowledge evolution as a fact, but it's debatable if the Catholic Church officially acknowledges it as such.  The word, "evolution", doesn't appear in The Cathecsim of the Cathlic Church. Officially, Catholics are free to either accept evolution or reject it.  So there is no dilemma.

Unfortunately, many Catholics are so ignorant and naive as to uncritically accept the opinion of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, which was set up to advise the Pope on matters of science.  The PAS is made up of scientists who are not all Catholics by any means - many are non-Catholic and some are atheists.  Anyway, their consensus on evolution is sadly no different to that of mainstream science.
There are also many Catholics who are silly enough to think that evolution can be reconciled with Scripture.

-- Updated November 1st, 2016, 4:27 am to add the following --

Anthony Edgar:

I only accept scientific theories that can be verified by observation or experimentation. I'm not missing out on anything by using these criteria, as they serve to filter out the theories that have no practical use.

That sounds like a sensible policy. If a theory does not generate any predicted observations then it clearly can't be falsified or verified.

But what, in your view, counts as verification by observation or experimentation? Suppose I have a theory which states that a particular set of events happened at some time in the past, but are not currently happening and are not expected to happen in the future? Suppose my theory is based on evidence that exists in the present. It could be any set of past events, really, from the birth of Henry VIII to the initial formation of the Himalayan mountain range to the speciation that led to our divergence from our common ancestor with chimpanzees. All of these events happened in the past, will not happen in the future and are verified by examining evidence that exists now and deciding what is the most likely explanation for that currently existing evidence.

Do you count this kind of verification as valid? Or do you think that scientific theories should confine themselves purely to events that can directly reproduced in the present and future? Do you believe that Henry VIII existed? Why?

I don't think scientific theories should confine themselves to anything.  

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Regarding your example of the formation of the Himalayan mountain range, I can accept the explanation for it as plausible even though that event occurred in the distant past and won't be repeated.  Tectonic plates colliding is easy to accept as a plausible explanation since earthquakes have been reported throughout history and are observable in the present, and there is physical geological evidence of massive shifts in the earth's surface.  Plus there are no alternative theories, as far as I know.  

If there were no recorded history of earthquakes, no earthquakes in the present, no geological evidence of shifts and there were an alternative theory, then tectonic plates colliding would not be not so easy to accept.  

As for the theory that speciation allowed apes to evolve into humans, there is no record of speciation ever occurring.  The fossil record is lacking in transitionals (as usual).  Plus there is an alternative theory - creation.  So apes evolving into humans is a theory that is too questionable to accept as the truth.

I believe Henry VIII existed because there are historical documents that say so and tradition (which is based on eye-witness accounts) says he existed.  Plus no one is saying he didn't exist.  

[Dolphin42]

Anthony Edgar:

I don't think scientific theories should confine themselves to anything.

I disagree. I think they should confine themselves to things that can, at least in principle, be tested by empirical observation. Your comments on such things as exotic theories of gravity (and your apparent belief that they are pure science fiction with no basis in observed reality) seems to support this idea.

Regarding your example of the formation of the Himalayan mountain range, I can accept the explanation for it as plausible even though that event occurred in the distant past and won't be repeated. Tectonic plates colliding is easy to accept as a plausible explanation since earthquakes have been reported throughout history and are observable in the present, and there is physical geological evidence of massive shifts in the earth's surface. Plus there are no alternative theories, as far as I know.

I agree that there is strong evidence for plate tectonics but actually (I have learnt from reading posters on this very website) there are, and have been, alternative theories. One of them is, I'm told, the "expanding Earth theory". Some people swear by it and are adamant that plate tectonics is a fraud. The preponderance of evidence appears to be against the expanding earth thing. But that doesn't mean it should be rejected out of hand. If it makes a serious attempt to be a predictive theory then it should be assessed on its merits, I think.

If there were no recorded history of earthquakes, no earthquakes in the present, no geological evidence of shifts and there were an alternative theory, then tectonic plates colliding would not be not so easy to accept.

Agreed. In fact I've read that the idea that entire continents slowly move around was quite rightly treated with scepticism when it was first proposed. On the face of it, it does appear like an extraordinary, unbelievable suggestion, doesn't it?

As for the theory that speciation allowed apes to evolve into humans...

As far as I'm aware there is no such theory, although I am aware that this mis-characterisation has existed ever since the TOE was first proposed. There is a theory that humans and other apes have a common ancestor.

...there is no record of speciation ever occurring. The fossil record is lacking in transitionals (as usual).

This is frequently asserted, and it is based on a misunderstanding of what it means to be a "transitional". For any given pair of species it will always be possible to point out there is no extant species in between the two. If you point out that there is no extant species between species A and species C, and if I then point to species B you can simply point out that there is no species between A and B or between B and C. You could do this indefinitely. In fact, all species are transitional. Evidence strongly suggests that they are all in a state of transition.

There is no extant species that is more closely related to humans than chimpanzees. There is an extant species which is more closely related to humans than orangutans - chimpanzees. There is strong evidence that various species that were more closely related to us than chimps did exist in the recent past (various species of hominids). At some point in the distant future when the other great apes have long since died out and are remembered only by strong but indirect evidence, there will perhaps be people pointing out there are no intermediate species between humans and other mammals and will perhaps scoff at the idea that these mythical hairy apes used to exist.

Food for thought?

Plus there is an alternative theory - creation. So apes evolving into humans is a theory that is too questionable to accept as the truth.

If we propose creation as an alternative theory then we have to ask the most basic question that we would ask of any theory: What does it predict? If we are following William Paley and talking about the most commonly used argument for an intelligent creator of life - the argument by analogy with the intelligent creators of other complex structures like watches - then we have to ask: If this structure was designed by an intelligent mind with a purpose, what design features would we expect to find? If, on the other hand, we postulate that this structure evolved, what features would we expect to find then? If there is a difference in expectations, then we can make a judgement as to which is most likely to be true by making observations of various characteristics of living things.

The most obvious difference is the fact that evolution by natural selection has no ability to plan for the future. It can only react to the environment of the present.

etc.

This is a very, very well rehearsed subject of discussion that has been repeated many times on this site and elsewhere, so I'll leave it there for now.

I believe Henry VIII existed because there are historical documents that say so and tradition (which is based on eye-witness accounts) says he existed. Plus no one is saying he didn't exist.

I agree. But, as philosophers, we can postulate that he (or perhaps a figure from the more distant past if we want to add a bit more realism to the discussion) did not exist so that we can examine the similarities between beliefs that seem so certain that we take them for granted and beliefs that are based on more tenuous and indirect evidence. We can learn that all evidence is indirect to a greater or lesser extent.

[Fooloso4]

Anthony Edgar:

There are many high ranking Catholics who acknowledge evolution as a fact, but it's debatable if the Catholic Church officially acknowledges it as such.

Your infallible Pope’s have said:

Pope John Paul II:

In his encyclical Humani generis (1950), my predecessor Pius XII has already affirmed that there is no conflict between evolution and the doctrine of the faith regarding man and his vocation, provided that we do not lose sight of certain fixed points. ... Today, more than a half-century after the appearance of that encyclical, some new findings lead us toward the recognition of evolution as more than a hypothesis. In fact it is remarkable that this theory has had progressively greater influence on the spirit of researchers, following a series of discoveries in different scholarly disciplines. The convergence in the results of these independent studies—which was neither planned nor sought—constitutes in itself a significant argument in favor of the theory.

Pope Francis:

God is not a demiurge or a magician, but the creator who gives being to all things... The Big Bang, which nowadays is posited as the origin of the world, does not contradict the divine act of creating, but rather requires it. The evolution of nature does not contrast with the notion of creation, as evolution presupposes the creation of beings that evolve.

Anthony Edgar:

many Catholics are so ignorant and naive as to uncritically accept the opinion of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences

The Popes must be both infallible and ignorant.

[Rainman]

I find that in these types of discussions, the starting point never gets back to the basics. To me, the basics are these: Matter/energy exists. It is in motion. The motion is not random. And that is the key...it is not random and never was random and never could be random. The universe could not exist in any form if the motion of the matter/energy was random. It would be more than chaos because there would be nothing holding together long enough to even be classified as chaotic. So the universe was not "designed" because it could not even exist in chaos. The universe has always existed in a non chaotic form. I think discussions about design need to start from there.

[Anthony Edgar]

Reply to Anthony Edgar:

(In response to Vijaydevani) Other than that, I've noticed that, like a lot of atheists, you are quick to condemn God for all the horrible things in the world, but never give God credit for any of the nice things in the world. Your approach seems decidedly illogical, unbalanced and, dare I say, unfair.
Or is it that God is responsible for all the bad things, but not responsible for any of the good things? If so, how can that be?

If an atheist, by definition, does not accept the claims to existence of a god or God, then how do you imagine that they would either condemn or give credit to a God in which they do not believe?

I was a bit lazy with my words when I wrote that post.  My argument goes more like this: 
If all the bad things in the world can be used to argue AGAINST the existence of God, then all the good things in the world can be used to argue FOR the existence of God.  Furthermore, if one thinks life is worth living, then one must believe that there are more good things in the world than bad things -  in which case, there is more evidence for the existence of God than the non-existence of God.

I often hear atheists citing the bad things in the world as evidence against the existence of God, but they conveniently ignore the flip side of their logic.
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If God made all the good things, and if he is omnipotent, then he would also be capable of making bad things.  But why would he make bad things?  He may have a reason for making bad things, but I can't imagine what it would be.  According to my religion, "God is love", so the thought of a loving God making bad things doesn't make any sense.  My religion also teaches that bad things are not of God's making, but are a result of the Original  Sin of Adam and Eve.