What Is Your Evidence?

[Cuppycake]

You know, it's getting close to the end of the month and I'm really just trying to get to my 30 posts again.  Incidentally, Sagan was one of my favorite authors, I'm sure I read everything he ever wrote.  He died too young, RIP.

The down side of the pay to post...

[falcon9]

What do you give us here in your reply?  

Quashing your diversionary b.s. was done off-handedly.  It remains that you irrational xtian adherents of your superstitious religious belief system have continued to dodge the responsibility of substantiating your specious religious claims/empty declarations.  Either you have no solid evidence to support your claims or, you are unable to do so, (especially without a circular blind faith reference to the the blind faith itself).

More ad hominem from you ...

While nothing in that response constitutes ad hom, (except to a definition-redefining faith-blinded fundie), merely following the "Golden Rule" to the same extent which you are seemed appropriate.

Why must you so often use logical fallacies to try to form your arguments?

Why must you keep fabricating, (lying overtly), nearly every time your fallacious arguments are refuted?

[jcribb16]

The Problem of Science and the Bible

The most frequently raised scientific issue is the question of evolution. Everyone who believes the Bible accepts the fact that God is the Creator of the universe. But while evangelicals agree on the who, they do not all agree on the how of creation. Many believe that this is a young earth and that the six days of creation in Genesis 1 are 24-hour days. Others believe that these days are figurative, and that God directly intervened at various points in the long evolutionary process. The question here is not who is right, but how to deal with the issue of evolution when the non-Christian raises it as an objection to the existence of God or the reliability of the Genesis creation account. The most basic issue is nontheistic evolution versus creation by God, not the age of the earth.

The nontheistic evolutionary model assumes that nonliving systems generated life by means of time plus chance, and that microevolution (small changes) leads to macroevolution (large changes, as in the microbe-to-man theory). The philosophical problem with this model is that it makes the effects (complexity, life, intelligence, personality) greater than the causes (disorder, nonlife, random interactions and mutations, and impersonal events).

There are also scientific problems with nontheistic evolution. It offers no workable mechanism that will account for the first living cell, let alone the complexity of the human brain.

http://bible.org/seriespage/uniqueness-bible

[jcribb16]

The chemical production of a first living cell would have to follow this sequence:

(1) Random atoms must be formed into amino acids.
(2) These amino acids must link together to form chains (polypeptides).
(3) These chains must become long (hundreds of amino acids) and they must form in an ordered sequence, since there are 20 kinds of amino acids. This will produce a simple protein molecule.
(4) More complex proteins must be produced.
(5) Very long and highly ordered molecular chains known as DNA must be formed and maintained.
(6) An enormously complex chemical factory must be produced, complete with special protein formations, enzymes, DNA, RNA, ribosomes, a cell wall, etc. This single cell must be able to reproduce itself and carry on all the functions of life. Without a rational ordering agent, every step but the first would require nothing short of a statistical miracle, even under the most ideal circumstances.

Many people argue that, given enough time, even the most improbable events become probable. This sounds reasonable only until specific numbers are used. Consider George Bernard Shaw’s argument that if a million monkeys constantly typed on a million typewriters for a long enough time, one of them would eventually pound out a Shakespearean play. Assume a million monkeys typing 24 hours a day at 100 words a minute on typewriters with 40 keys. If each word of the play contained four letters, the first word would be typed by one of the monkeys in about 12 seconds. However, it would require about five days to get the first two words (eight letters) on one of the typewriters. How long would it take to get the first four words? About 100 billion years! No one could imagine the amount of time which would be required to produce the first scene.


http://bible.org/seriespage/uniqueness-bible

[jcribb16]

Beginning with the first step, many evolutionists assume a primordial earthly atmosphere with no oxygen so that amino acids could be formed. However, the very atmosphere that could produce them would immediately lead to their destruction (due to ultraviolet light penetrating this oxygen-free atmosphere) unless they were protected. Unfounded assumptions must be multiplied to overcome this problem.

On the next level, let us assume an ideal environment with a primordial soup full of amino acids and the proper catalysts, with just the right temperature and moisture. Some estimate that under these favorable conditions the chances of getting dipeptides (two amino acids bonded) would be about one in 100. But the chances of tripeptide formation would be about one in 10,000. To get a polypeptide of only ten amino acids, the probability would be one chance in 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 (100 quintillion). Yet the proteins in the simplest living things have chains of at least 400 amino acids on the average.

To make matters worse, all proteins are built of amino acids that are exclusively “left-handed” in their molecular orientation. Left-handed and right handed amino acids are mirror images of each other, and their chances of formation are about the same. Although both kinds can link with each other, the first living systems must have been built with left-handed components only. Some scientists have evoked natural selection here, but this only applies to systems that can already reproduce themselves. Without an intelligent ordering agent, we have only chance to explain this amazing phenomenon. For a chain of 400 left-handed amino acids, the odds would be roughly equivalent to tossing an ordinary coin and coming up with tails 400 times in a row. The chances for that would be approximately one in 10120 (a 1 followed by 120 zeroes). All this for one protein molecule, and hundreds of similar molecules would be needed in the first living system.

http://bible.org/seriespage/uniqueness-bible

[jcribb16]

None of this accounts for the fact that the 20 kinds of amino acids operate like letters in an alphabet, and they must link in a meaningful sequence to form a usable protein. A random sequence of amino acids would be utterly useless. DNA is far more complex than any of this, and it too is built out of a highly organized alphabet. The letters are molecules called nucleotides. A cell contains a chain of about three billion pairs of these nucleotides (each gene has about 1,200 nucleotide pairs). The order of these nucleotides or bases is crucial because every triplet of bases along this immense chain is a word. Each word stands for one of the 20 kinds of amino acids. Using these words the DNA can literally create any kind of protein that the cell needs.

The amount of time required to synthesize even one gene (a paragraph of these words) has been calculated by some scientists using absurdly generous assumptions. Using a variation on a well-known illustration, suppose a bird came once every billion years and removed ony one atom from a stone the size of the solar system. The amount of time required for the stone to be worn to nothing would be negligible compared to the time needed to create a useful gene by chance, even accounting for chemical affinities and an ideal environment. Shaw’s monkeys would long since have pounded out the words of Shakespeare!

But none of this can compare to the far greater complexity of a living cell. Even the simplest living system would require elaborately coded information, growth, reproduction, stability, adaptability, environmental response, and metabolism. Yet evolutionists demand spontaneous generation of life through chemical interaction because they think the only other option would be a miracle. In reality, a miracle cannot be avoided. The only question is whether life appeared out of the primordial soup or by the living God.

http://bible.org/seriespage/uniqueness-bible

[jcribb16]

In addition, none of the above considers the fact that every chemical reaction along the way from amino acids to life is reversible. This means that whenever a higher point of complexity is reached, it is unstable compared to its environment and may break down into its components. A polypeptide bond of four amino acids can easily break down into four separate amino acids.

The second law of thermodynamics tells us that all natural processes cause a net increase in entropy (disorder) and a net loss of useful energy. Any system left to itself will decay and degenerate. Free energy from the sun can cause slight increases in complexity, but the breakdown rate soon matches the buildup rate. The only way to build structures as complex as protein is to have an already existing machine that can translate raw energy into a more highly organized form. Solar energy may be plentiful, but it is useless for building complex systems unless such systems already exist. Life comes only from life, complexity only from complexity. Faith in an original spontaneous generation of life goes against all experience and evidence. It has been said that “teleology is a lady without whom no biologist can exist; yet he is ashamed to be seen with her in public.” Design requires a designer, and this is precisely what is lacking in nontheistic evolution. Of course, the subject of evolution entails other matters such as mutations and natural selection, comparative anatomy, the fossil record, and fossil men. These are not trivial matters, but the most basic issue is that the impersonal mechanism of evolution will not by itself produce life or personality. Whether or not God superintended any kind of evolutionary process is an entirely different issue, and those who accept the Genesis creation account are divided on this matter. Scientists who acknowledge the authority of Scripture do not have a uniform view of the age of the earth, and they interpret the fossil evidence and the geological strata in different ways. On the other hand, the speculations of some nontheistic evolutionists sometimes stretch beyond the limits of the scientific method as they conceive scenarios that are clearly contrary to the biblical world view. Forgetting the tentative nature of science, they make confident assertions about the genesis of life and man. But even if a theory demonstrates how something might have happened, this is a far cry from proving that it really did happen this way.

http://bible.org/seriespage/uniqueness-bible

[jcribb16]

We must also remember that the Bible is not a scientific textbook, but when it does touch on scientific matters, it has proven to be trustworthy. In the past, two problems have contributed to misunderstanding about the scientific validity of the Bible. The first is the erroneous scientific conclusions drawn from the Bible by the church. The most notable error is the teaching that the sun and planets revolve around the earth. Some writers delight in referring to the trial of Galileo for his “heretical” notion that the sun may be the center of the solar system, but the Bible cannot be blamed for this blunder. The second cause of misunderstanding is that the Bible uses phenomenological language. That is, it describes nature as it appears to the eye. Thus, it speaks of sunrises and sunsets (“Its rising is from one end of heaven, and its circuit to the other end; and there is nothing hidden from its heat,” Ps. 19:6). But this does not teach that the sun rotates about the earth any more than today’s scientist means this when he uses the term “sunrise” and “sunset.” Others say that the Bible is in error because it says that pi is equal to 3 instead of 3.14. They base this on 1 Kings 7:23 where a laver ten cubits in diameter is given a circumference of 30 cubits. Comparing 7:23 with 7:26, however, it appears that the circumference was measured by using the inside diameter. The biblical phrase “the four corners of the earth” has been misunderstood to mean that the earth is flat with four literal corners. But Scripture uses this phrase figuratively, referring to all directions (Isa. 11:12; Ezek. 7:2; Rev. 7:1; 20:.

When the Bible makes positive statements about the workings of nature, it is quite accurate, often running contrary to the erroneous concepts that were held in the time it was written. Job 36:27-29 gives an excellent description of the hydrologic cycle of evaporation, condensation, and precipitation. The statement about the earth in Job 26:7 was also far ahead of its time: “He stretches out the north over empty space; He hangs the earth on nothing.” Other biblical statements about astronomy, biology, and medicine (e.g., the quarantine and sanitary laws of Leviticus) are equally remarkable.

http://bible.org/seriespage/uniqueness-bible

[falcon9]

We must also remember that the Bible is not a scientific textbook, but when it does touch on scientific matters, it has proven to be trustworthy.

What, (non-xtian), evidence is there to support that claim?

  In the past, two problems have contributed to misunderstanding about the scientific validity of the Bible. The first is the erroneous scientific conclusions drawn from the Bible by the church. The most notable error is the teaching that the sun and planets revolve around the earth. Some writers delight in referring to the trial of Galileo for his “heretical” notion that the sun may be the center of the solar system, but the Bible cannot be blamed for this blunder.

No, however followers of 'biblical teachings', (namely, the RCC), are directly to blame.  That they based their "heresy" charges directly upon the religion which constantly uses the 'bible' to prop up such irrationalities as the planets revolving around the earth, the xtian religion is to blame in regards to Galileo.

The second cause of misunderstanding is that the Bible uses phenomenological language. That is, it describes nature as it appears to the eye.

This is merely another way of saying that the biblical writers were ignorant at 'best' and stupid, at minimum.

When the Bible makes positive statements about the workings of nature, it is quite accurate, often running contrary to the erroneous concepts that were held in the time it was written. Job 36:27-29 gives an excellent description of the hydrologic cycle of evaporation, condensation, and precipitation. The statement about the earth in Job 26:7 was also far ahead of its time: “He stretches out the north over empty space; He hangs the earth on nothing.” Other biblical statements about astronomy, biology, and medicine (e.g., the quarantine and sanitary laws of Leviticus) are equally remarkable.
http://bible.org/seriespage/uniqueness-bible

The examples given "stretch" credulity in that vague religious assertions regarding hydrologic, evaporative, precipitative functions are attributed to a supernatural egregore and not physics.  The remaining vague claims about "astronomy, biology, and medicine", are unreferenced assertions.
Further, the reference source is "bible.org"; an inherently biased source.

[falcon9]

http://bible.org/seriespage/uniqueness-bible

The source is tainted by religious bias and uses dubious biblical references, (verse-quoting), to bolster weaking reasoning.

[momoney555]

Falcon9

Too,  Too Funny!

[jcribb16]

Unless you have more you are working on, I've noticed you don't really have much refuting to say.  There's more truth to much of that than you would even care to admit to.

[falcon9]

Unless you have more you are working on, I've noticed you don't really have much refuting to say.  There's more truth to much of that than you would even care to admit to.

Why bother?  You faith-blinded fundies would be unable to comprehend the technical refutations.  Although I may choose to refute more later, just for the vicarious amusement of 'talking over your heads'.
 

[jcribb16]

Unless you have more you are working on, I've noticed you don't really have much refuting to say.  There's more truth to much of that than you would even care to admit to.

Why bother?  You faith-blinded fundies would be unable to comprehend the technical refutations.  Although I may choose to refute more later, just for the vicarious amusement of 'talking over your heads'.
 

You think way too highly of yourself, especially in areas of which you think you know everything, when you really have no idea.

[Abrupt]

What do you give us here in your reply?  

Quashing your diversionary b.s. was done off-handedly.  It remains that you irrational xtian adherents of your superstitious religious belief system have continued to dodge the responsibility of substantiating your specious religious claims/empty declarations.  Either you have no solid evidence to support your claims or, you are unable to do so, (especially without a circular blind faith reference to the the blind faith itself).

More ad hominem from you ...

While nothing in that response constitutes ad hom, (except to a definition-redefining faith-blinded fundie), merely following the "Golden Rule" to the same extent which you are seemed appropriate.

Why must you so often use logical fallacies to try to form your arguments?

Why must you keep fabricating, (lying overtly), nearly every time your fallacious arguments are refuted?

Do you want me to once again teach you what ad hominem is?  I told you it is within the post where I indicated and it is within your reply above.  That you cannot see it speaks to your ignorance of a description that you so often use.  This makes you quite the fool.