Why do you think

[MrDawn]

It’s sad that you don’t realize most of us are former Monotheists on here. Former xtians that is. You know exactly what it is that has been asked of you. Perhaps it is you that doesn’t know.

[CyberLN]

@Sid

If you could define what constitutes proof for a creator then I will gladly try my best to satisfy you

@Sid, is your god omniscient? Does your god listen and respond to prayer?

[skriten]

@Sid

If you could define what constitutes proof for a creator then I will gladly try my best to satisfy you but if you are completely clueless as to what defines a creator Oh wait ,you have no idea

Ok, let’s try this…I am imagining a thing. Now, could you please provide me with what would constitute “proof” for you?
Upon receipt of such, I will be happy to define the thing for you.

[CyberLN]

@skriten hit the nail on the head! As a theist, @Sid, you claim a god exists. As an atheist, I say I don’t believe you. I do not have to know the attributes of your god to say that. I also don’t have to know the attributes of your god to ask for evidence it exists. As a theist, or as a god, the evidence you lay out in support of your claim will either convince me you are right or it won’t.

[Randomhero1982]

No, let’s be clear in the fact that you are clearly trying to shift the burden of proof.

Let’s make this very simple, state which god(s) you believe in and a sensible and civil conversation/debate can take place.

But let’s be very clear, as of yet, no god(s) have ever had a single shred of evidence to prove they are in the slightest bit real.

For example… Some religions state their god created the earth, clearly this is demonstrably false.

Some claim that we are made by god(s), evolution debunks this.

And so on, and so on…

[Sid]

@MrDawn

It’s sad that you don’t realize most of us are former Monotheists on here. Former xtians that is. You know exactly what it is that has been asked of you. Perhaps it is you that doesn’t know.

How could I know that ?

Yes , I know what is being asked and once again unless you can tell me what would constitute a proof for something that you don’t have a clue what it is then it’s an unanswerable question .

[MrDawn]

You claim that I wouldn’t know the evidence. I’ll be the judge of that. That’s how a court of law operates. They deem whether or not your “evidence” is admissible or inadmissible.

[Sid]

I don’t get into discussions about my personal faith . I don’t see any point discussing #2 or #3 when you don’t believe in #1.

[MrDawn]

Then why are you here? You’re refusing to give evidence or you don’t have it and you’re bluffing. Still, that is evidence against your claim.

[CyberLN]

@Sid

I don’t get into discussions about my personal faith

So….you refuse to describe that which you believe? Yet you ask us to describe what would constitute evidence for it? Obh obh!

[Cognostic]

@Sid

I don’t have to define or provide proof of anything to you . If you are asking the silly question of proof then you define the terms of what constitutes GOD and then we will go from there

Not how it works silly sid. You are of course correct. You don’t have to provide proof of anything. You can believe because you want to believe. That’s a shit epistemology but you are certainly welcome to it. So you believe because you want to believe. Happy for you. Bye. There is no discusion here. You are welcome to your shit epistemology.

[Calilasseia]

@WhoAreYou

You don’t understand atheism is a philosophical viewpoint. It is.

Wrong. It’s simply a refusal to treat uncritically as fact, unsupported mythological assertions. Stop lying.

@WhoAreYou

It’s an interpretation on scientific theories a lot of which are not supported by actual science

Bare faced lie. We accept the conclusions that the scientists themselves present, and do so without modification. No fucking “interpretation” involved. Again, stop lying. Oh wait, the people who routinely quote mine and misrepresent scientific papers and their conclusions are creationists. Indeed, there’s an entire website devoted to creationist quote mining, namely this one. The contents thereof are suitably educational with respect to creationist apologetic mendacity.

@WhoAreYou

For example, take natural selection and how unscientific it is.

BULLSHIT. Theodosius Dobzhansky conducted experiments validating natural selection way back in 1948. The paper documenting the requisite experiments is this one:

Genetics Of Natural Populations. XVIII. Proof Of Operation Of Natural Selection In Wild Populations Of Drosophila pseudoobscura by Theodosius Dobzhansky and Howard Levene, Genetics, 33: 537 (November 1948)

From that paper:

As a working hypothesis, it may be assumed that in natural populations likewise, the fitness of inversion heterozygotes is higher than that of homozygotes, and that the observed temporal changes in the natural populations are connected with this difference in fitness. If this hypothesis is valid, the homozygotes will be less and the heterozygotes will be more frequent among the flies found in nature than would be expected on the basis of the HARDY-WEINBERG equilibrium. The present article describes an attempt to test this working hypothesis.

Later on, the authors provide this:

For this purpose, samples of adult flies are collected in natural habitats and analyzed in two ways. First, females which had been fertilized before capture are permitted to lay eggs in individual cultures. The larvae are raised under optimal conditions at which little selection occurs (see WRIGHT and DOBZHANSKY 946), and the chromosomes of one full grown larva from each culture are examined. These samples of larvae can be considered random samples of the eggs that would have been laid in nature by the females, and they can be used to test for panmixia. Such data will be called egg samples.

Second, the males, caught in natural habitats at the same time, are individually mated to females of known chromosome constitution, and chromosomes of the resulting larvae are examined. Seven larvae (before 1945) and six larvae (during and since 1945) are examined. The first larva examined discloses one of the paternal chromosomes. The remaining larvae have a probability 63/64 or 31/32 of disclosing the other paternal chromosome. The wild adult males are thus classified as to karyotype, except that on the average 1/64 or 1/32 of the heterozygotes present are incorrectly classified as homozygotes. This type of data will be called adult male samples and can be used to test for selection, if egg samples have shown panmixia to hold. For more details about the methods used see DOBZHANSKY and EPLING (1944).

Oh look, description of an experiment testing the validity of natural selection. Let’s move on to the discussion section, which reads as follows:

The purpose of the present study has been to test the hypothesis that the frequencies in natural populations of gene arrangements in the third chromosome of Drosophila pseudoobscura are controlled by natural selection. As stated in the Introduction, this hypothesis was originally advanced on the basis of observations on seasonal changes in the frequencies of the chromosomal type in certain localities (DOBZHANSKY 1943). This hypothesis was first confirmed by experiments which showed that some of the changes observed in nature can be reproduced in artificial populations in population cages (WRIGHT and DOBZHANSKY 1946). Next, it was shown that, in population cages, there is a differential mortality between the egg and the adult stage which favors inversion heterozygotes and discriminates against homozygotes (DOBZHANSKY
1947a). The data reported in the present article complete the proof of the hypothesis by showing that for the eggs deposited in natural populations the proportions of homo- and heterozygotes are as demanded by the HARDY-WEINBERG rule, while among the adult males found in nature heterozygotes are more, and homozygotes are less, frequent than this rule requires. It follows that, at least among the male zygotes, there is differential mortality which favors inversion heterozygotes. This fact alone, without any information on seasonal or other temporal changes, would be sufficient to show that the frequencies of the gene arrangements in nature are subject to selective pressure.

Game over.

Of course, there are more modern papers covering experimental tests of selection, but the above should be sufficient for honest readers of this post.

@WhoAreYou

Here is what an expert in thermodynamics said: life is a state of very low entropy it’s very improbable and a state of very high energy.

Oh look, boys and girls, he’s resurrecting the repeatedly destroyed “evolution violates the second law ot thermodynamics” canard!!! Which I cover in detail in the document linked to in this thread. Specifically, I cover creationist bullshit about thermodynamics as Canard #28 in that document. I also cite in that section, six peer reviewed scientific papers destroying this bullshit. Namely, this set of papers:

Entropy And Evolution by Daniel F. Styer, American Journal of Physics, 78(11): 1031-1033 (November 2008) DOI: 10.1119/1.2973046

Natural Selection As A Physical Principle by Alfred J. Lotka, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 8: 151-154 (1922) [full paper downloadable from here]

Evolution Of Biological Complexity by Christoph Adami, Charles Ofria and Travis C. Collier, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 97(9): 4463-4468 (25th April 2000) [Full paper downloadable from here]

Order From Disorder: The Thermodynamics Of Complexity In Biology by Eric D. Schneider and James J. Kay, in Michael P. Murphy, Luke A.J. O’Neill (ed), What is Life: The Next Fifty Years. Reflections on the Future of Biology, Cambridge University Press, pp. 161-172 [Full paper downloadable from here]

Natural Selection For Least Action by Ville R. I. Kaila and Arto Annila, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Part A, 464: 3055-3070 (22nd July 2008) [Full paper downloadable from here]

Evolution And The Second Law Of Thermodynamics by Emory F. Bunn, arXiv.org, 0903.4603v1 (26th March 2009) [Download full paper from here]

Your unnamed “expert” is talking out of his arse. Let me guess, another shill for the Duplicity Institute? Is that why you’re afraid to name this “expert”?

Meanwhile, here’s another lie from your “expert”:

This is acknowledged by origin of life people, so the way they deal with it is is by appealing to natural selection.

Bullshit. Every scientific paper on the subject I’ve presented here deals with this via chemistry. Once again, stop lying.

Oh, and by the way, this little snippet:

@WhoAreYou

The problem is you can’t have natural selection if nothing isn’t reproducing.

is rendered null and void by experiments establishing that self-replicating RNA strands exist, such as the ones documented in those four papers by the team of Japanese scientists who watched their RNA strands generate a molecular ecosystem via Darwinian evolution. So already, your assertions are busted.

Oh, by the way, this from the first of those papers you presented:

A principal reason for this is that purely “chemical” processes run thermodynamically “downhill,” whereas life has to run its most essential transformations “uphill”– transformations that go thermodynamically “backwards” or “in reverse”–in order to create far-from-equilibrium (FFE) states on which it absolutely depends.

is demonstrably wrong. Endothermic reactions have been known to exist by chemists for over 200 years. Supply an energy input and those reactions take place. Oh wait, what’s that big yellow thing in the sky again? A huge source of energy. Oh, and care to explain which of the 84 peer reviewed scientific papers I presented in my exposition on the origin of life is purportedly “wrong” about this, when they document experiments demonstrating that reactions of this sort work?

Oh, and by the way, the authors of those two papers, in case you never bothered to read those papers in full, but merely quote mined them for duplicitous apologetic purposes, present a case for hydrothermal vents being the means of kick-starting the origin of life. From the second paper:

We here present our reasons for thinking that the answer is an unambiguous “no”: life’s emergence was no less dependent on macromolecular disequilibria-converting engines than it now universally is.^[7–11] And further, we assert that this requirement is one that only the alkaline hydrothermal vent (AHV) theory can reasonably address.

Oh wait, the authors are presenting (badly, as it happens) a hypothesis that chemistry in the proximity of alkaline hydrothermal vents was responsible for the originn of life. Indeed, the authors present the following as the caption to Figure 1 in that second paper:

The redox and pH disequilibria driving the onset of metabolism. Volcanoes supply the CO₂ and some NO.^[97,134] Lightning produces further NO.^[84] ≈410 ºC springs supply the metals to the ocean that precipitate as green rust and minor mackinawite (Fe>>NiS) on meeting alkaline hydrothermal solutions at the hydrothermal mound and around its periphery.^{[5,53,58,69,90]} As indicated, the green rust eventually converts into Banded Iron Formation.^[49,53] There are no continental landmasses in this Hadean water world as the radiogenically hot yet dense ocean crust comprising basalt, komatiite and iron formation, tends to founder and find a common level.^[27,28].

Here is Figure 1 from that paper:

The authors then provide this from the same paper:

In brief, the AHV theory is based on the fact noted earlier, that the tectonomagmatic processes driving the renewal of oceanic crust cause a large fraction of it to be hydrated, carbonated and oxidized by “serpentinization reactions.”^{[28,31,32,44,45]} These processes lead to strongly alkaline, reduced, and long lasting hydrothermal effluents venting into, and chemically colliding with, the ocean (Figure 1). There, precipitate structures form with promising physical, mineralogical, and chemical properties—if, that is, one is looking for an incubator that might be able to give birth to the great march from rocks to the “tangled bank.”^[33] A summary accounting of a contemporary version of the AHV theory is given next.

The main mineral comprising the precipitate mound having engine-like characteristics is green rust ([~Fe₆^IIFe₂^III(OH)16]²⁺. [CO₃^2-.5H₂O]^2-)—the precursor to the Banded Iron Formations (Figure 1).^[35,46–51] The iron was ultimately supplied by ≈410 C sulfate-absent acidic springs bearing up to 80mmol L^-1 of Fe, where it remained supersaturated until meeting alkaline fluids.^[28,52,53] Nickel, cobalt, molybdenum, and tungsten are the other transition metals contributing to the BIFs, and thus the alkaline hydrothermal mounds.^[29] The trigger for the precipitation of green rust (along with subsidiary mackinawite, pyrrhotite, greigite, and trace molybdenite) is the meeting of the iron-charged ocean with hydrogen-, formate-, and methane-bearing alkaline fluids—fluids that also contribute minor concentrations of sulfide and molybdenum anions.^[54–58]

In the mound, green rust responds to electrochemical gradients imposed across the precipitates through the synchronous hopping of electrons from Fe²⁺ to Fe³⁺ - so inducing a migration of proton holes, “phonons” and thereby effecting peristaltic pumping or ratcheting of molecules inwards and outwards through the hydrous interlayers (Figure 2).^[59–62] It is in this way that green rust behaves as a reversible electrochemical machine, nano-engine or enzyme, driven by electron and ionic gradients.^[63] Deprotonation of the interlayer hydroxyl in green rust (where Fe^III/Fe^total is 1/3) in the pH range 8–10, is followed by electron loss from Fe^II leaving Fe^III with oxidizing potential at Fe^III/Fe^total=2/3).^[64] It may be reduced by, for example, electrons emanating from hydrothermal hydrogen (at a protohydrogenase such as nickelian mackinawite), methane and formate or directly during afferent oxidation of mackinawite, pyrrhotite, greigite, or ferrous hydroxide.^[65–70]

Oh look, sounds like they’re proposing a chemical process for kick-starting the origin of life. Though the opinionated tone the authors take in their papers is seriously at variance with standard scientific paper writing practice, but that’s an issue that can be remedied with a rewrite. Meanwhile, the rest of pages 7 & 8 continue in the same vein, describing chemical reactions.

Looks like your apologetics are being exposed as increasingly specious with each examination of the data.

Moving on …

@WhoAreYou

Again atheism is faith

BARE FACED LIE. STOP LYING.

NOT treating unsupported mythological assertions uncritically as fact, is the very ANTITHESIS of “faith”. You’re lying.

@WhoAreYou

Based on interpretation of science even when unscientific.

BARE FACED LIE. STOP LYING.

Unlike lying sack of shit mythology fanboys, we don’t twist scientists’ conclusions to fit dogma. We accept those conclusions exactly as the scientists presented them. Unlike creationists, who as I’ve already noted at the beginning of this post, engage in rampant quote mining.

@WhoAreYou

Case in point, population geneticists will not deny that we are not evolving, instead our genes are degenerating.

This is creationist bullshit, that’s been destroyed over and over again. Fitness increases have been demonstrated to occur in hundreds of different species of living organisms. I’m aware of two papers demonstrating this in Podarcis lizards and sticklebacks alone.

Finally … WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO STOP LYING?

[Tin-Man]

@Sid

If you are asking the silly question of proof then you define the terms of what constitutes GOD

Poor thing… Are you feeling well? Because I would love for you to show where I ever asked for proof of your god(s). Ya see, unlike most others here, my being an atheist is due strictly to the ridiculous contradicting and inconsistent nonsense I was taught about the Christian god my entire life. It is NOT contingent upon YOU showing me any type of “proof.” The way I see it, if your all-knowing/all-powerful god does somehow exist, then it is the responsibility of THAT ENTITY to provide me with the proof that IT SHOULD KNOW would convince me of its existence. Meanwhile, IF it happens to exist, I can only surmise at this point it is not interested in having me believe it exists. Hmmm… … Wonder if it might have something to do with its “Perfect Plan”?

[Tin-Man]

@Sid

When I’m playing in somebody else’s sandbox I always try to be respectful and civil .

Sooo… When, exactly, are you gonna start practicing what you preach?

[Sheldon]

@Sid

I always try to be respectful and civil .

Coming to an atheist debate forum, and taunting people with cryptic preaching, then evading all debate about the beliefs you’re peddling is not at all respectful.

Can you demonstrate any objective evidence for your belief in a deity? That’s a good starting point for debate, from there we can either scrutinise what you think is objective evidence, or you can try and explain why you believe a deity exists in the absence of any, and especially what your criteria is for disbelieving all the others in that event.

You’re being given another chance to show some respect, I suggest you use it. NB People get respect, ideas and beliefs have to stand on their own merit, and you are offering yours thus far with naught but dishonest and cryptic semantics, and sneering contempt for the people here that you know nothing about beyond the fact they don’t share your belief. .

.

[Sheldon]

@Sid

I don’t get into discussions about my personal faith .

Then why are you in an atheist debate forum, and why are you offering semantically erroneous and cryptic definitions for words like truth, implying the atheists here don’t already know what truth means?

@Sid

Yes , I know what is being asked and once again unless you can tell me what would constitute a proof for something that you don’t have a clue what it is then it’s an unanswerable question .

If objective evidence has you baffled you could trying telling us why you believe a deity is real, which deity it is, and offering your most compelling reasoning. The notion strangers on the internet in a debate forum have a burden to define what you believe, and they do not, before you can offer any explanation of why you believe it is asinine, and smacks of dishonest trolling.

A prime example of your dishonesty was your first post claiming that the notion life had no meaning was “the biggest lie” despite being asked to offer anything to support this claim you exhibited the same dishonest evasion we’re seeing here. As if you blow in here once in a while, troll for a bit to get a reaction, then leave.

@Sheldon

@Sid

That life and the universe have no meaning.

Can you demonstrate any objective evidence that life or the universe has any overarching meaning?

Do you mean all life? A banana or a mango tree for instance? I mean humans didn’t evolve until 200k years ago, so if a deity caused everything, that deity seems far more fascinated tinkering with dinosaur evolution, than with humans.

Not one poster ever got anything approaching an answer on that, and each time it’s the same. All you did was try shift the burden of proof there as well, not one word about what you think this meaning is, or any cogent reason or evidence to support the notion, beyond some vague assertion that philosophers had pondered the question.

@Sid

That was Sheldon’s question to me .
I replied that the question works both ways as evidenced by thousands of years of Philosophy .
Prove there is no meaning is just as valid a question.

Like that, it would only be a valid question if I claimed to know it had no meaning, and I only claim there is no evidence to support your claim it has meaning. Of course one could observe that humans have existed for an infinitesimally small amount of time, so the evidence does not suggest we are any more significant than any other life, and there is no objective evidence life has any overarching meaning, and since my criteria for belief is that sufficient objective evidence be demonstrated to support any belief, then clearly this is why I don’t believe life has any overarching meaning. I don’t claim to know, as it sounds like an unfalsifiable notion as well.

Your turn?

[Randomhero1982]

In a debate room on an atheist forum, but won’t discuss his faith…

I think that’s right up there in some of the most stupid comments I’ve ever read on here.

[Sheldon]

It’s demonstrably untrue as well, as he has discussed it, he just tries the old dishonest apologists trick of trying to dictate where the debate can go and what it can discuss.

We shouldn’t really be surprised since for millennia religions have not been offering choice and debate, but immutable absolutes.

[Randomhero1982]

Guy is full of shit, same old crap from theists on here, unable or unwilling to defend their beliefs.

[Cognostic]

@Randomhero1982

Guy is full of shit,

I didn’t do it. I have not been flinging poo. I am a good little monkey.