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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This DNA straw man is just kicking the can down the road.

Theists said the earth could not be 13.8 billion years old, until it was impossible to say otherwise.  So now God is the uncaused cause behind the Big Bang.

Evolution was a heresy that the theists fought tooth and nail, until we discovered the mechanism, DNA, and it was impossible to deny.  So now evolution is now just another example of the Divine Watchmaker at work.

If we show conclusively that RNA preceded DNA, they'll kick the can down that road.  If we push it back to ribosomes, they'll kick it down there too.  Still they will say that the system shows a quality that only an intelligent mind will create.

Then after another decade, we will prove that each of the steps can occur in real world settings without an intelligent hand guiding it.  We will have not one but five different example pathways.

And they will then forget that they ever made this intelligent design argument and say "you can't prove that any of these is the way".  And the fact that we will have done it five different ways will be used as proof against us, because there was most likely only one way and we won't know which one it really was.

Just more can kicking.  And each generation of science deniers gets the luxury of shedding the previous generation's backwardness.  Their grandparents mocked John Scopes but they are not responsible for that.  However, scientists are responsible for their entire historical legacy.  Scientists are held accountable for any change in theory.  Scientists with differing views are used as proof of the limits of science.  The very thing that gives science its integrity will be exploited as a weakness.

Face it, the theists always win because they [b]do not have to play fair.[/b]  Scientists are hamstrung by documenting their work, admitting its limitations, never being able to erase its mistakes, its requirement to use data and experimentation.  [/quote]

What an interesting post!

I know it was just a rhetorical device, but using the terms "win" and "lose," or "play fair," is so illuminating.  Because science and materialism and empiricism and rationalism are all supposed to be about facts, not value judgments.  There is no fair and unfair in matter and energy.  They just exist.

(I'm channeling the video rationalist now.)

This post shows that science has its set of objectives, and one of those objectives is[i] not [/i]answering "Why?"[/quote]

Well it must be even more illuminating for you to find out that I am a Christian.  But I am also a scientist and I find much fault with the proof of God arguments on this thread.

As for your other comment, science has the objective of truth.  But scientists do not have to be politely ignore unfair arguments.  As a Christian, I know (not guess or imagine but know) that believers as a whole have a heavy emotional stake in the outcome.  But while atheists may want to win a debate, it is pretty clear that any rational being would rather live in a world where there was the promise of immortality in a happy place with all of their loved ones in exchange for being good.  They do not have the same stake in the outcome.  It is a matter of intellectual position or perhaps some pride in being right, but it is by no means equivalent.

As for your comment about answering "why", I can only say that google scholar returns 3.8 million hits on the word, so there are at least that many research papers asking the question.  The NIV bible asks the question 510 times, and that was presumably a satisfactory level of curiosity for Christians.  I have made several posts that are points of substance, but frankly I am growing tired of it.  Half of the posts are ignored because posters can't read science research.  And yet they feel qualified to judge it.  And many of the same arguments  that were knocked down before resurface again and again.

So yes "we" theists have an agenda, and it is not an intellectual one.[/quote].

I'm sorry, I meant science does not ask an existential "why?". It can't.  [/quote]

Of course. That is the realm of philosophy or religion.  But scientists can be existentialists or even Christians.  They just don't think that science is the tool for the job.  You may think that religion is the tool for the job, but that only works for a believer.

I will say this though.  There are some theories in physics which, if proven true, would have profound and disastrous effects on major existential and religious questions.  Like causality may turn out to be an illusion, time might not move in one direction, many of you may exist and be making alternate choices, free will might not exist.  These are things that certain cosmological research could one day prove.  I hope not, but hey it is what it is.[/quote]

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