@Ganymedes
I could just as easily ask you for evidence that God doesn't exist, and you would be just as (supposedly) unable as me to find any. (though if you'd read through the whole chat you would see me giving examples of evidence in support of the truth of the Gospels and therefore attesting the existence of God).
Because He is an omnipotent deity that set the laws of this world in place, He is not bound by the laws of this world. Therefore "proof" (or "disproof") of His existence cannot be found by observing the laws of is world.
And, to be honest, unless you are actually open to the idea that God could be real, no evidence I give will be satisfactory, because you won't want it to be and you'll convince yourself it isn't. (To support my point, the fact that you ignored my evidence in support of the gospels and called for more.)

Anyway, let's assume God doesn't exist. The universe accidentally explodes into existence from nothing, a ton of extremely improbable chemical reactions accidentally happen to form nucleic acids and other biomolecules, these miraculously survived long enough to miraculously clump together with lots of other biomolecules, the nucleotides randomly bond together in a chance order which coincidentally forms the genome of the first prokaryote, somehow the cell gets a membrane, ribosomes and the thousands of other components essential to cell growth. So somehow it's genome is correct, and it is able to function fully...

Now, I don't know if you're much of a scientist, but I'm at least a half scientist (and biochemistry is my interest area) and when I look at that scientifically, I see mere guesswork at how the world happened. I have not seen experimental evidence to support any one of these steps happening, much less the chance of them happening all at once by pure accident, which are ridiculously tiny chances.
Anyway, assuming all that unlikelihood to have happened, we are the result of random chemical reactions, and therefore so are your thoughts. In which case, there is nothing to say that one person is right and one wrong. Bye bye objective morality.

Though one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him. And a threefold cord is not quickly broken.

Ecclesiastes 4:12 NKJV

Commentary:
This verse is telling us the value of having friends; you can stand together, help one another out, encourage each other in their faith and in other things.

Edited 2/5/2020 22:54:37

"a ton of extremely improbable chemical reactions accidentally happen to form nucleic"

You have almost answered your own question there friend. Improbable, not impossible. Something to consider is that these reactions happened over billions of years. I know it's difficult to comprehend just how much time that is (I'm not being sarcastic), but that is a really long time for small changes, granted improbable changes to accumulate. I only have to reference the butterfly effect for you to know what I mean.
As someone who is "at least a half scientist (and biochemistry is my interest area)", I'm sure you're aware of the studies carried out on the 'Miller-Urey experiment' vials. They have discovered 20 amino acids and amines! The building blocks of life!!! This is honestly incredible and testament to human ingenuity and genius. They created organic compounds from inorganic substances (feel to correct me on my terminology, long time since I studied biology). This happened in less than 70 years, imagine how much more could happen in a thousand years, a million years, maybe even billions of years hmmmmmm.

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/New-insights-into-prebiotic-chemistry-from-Stanley-Bada/ee5b3b10e890dc36f2d67a206471924e78b4813e

Edit: I said less than 100 years, but it's less than 70 years.

Edited 2/9/2020 13:36:44

For evolutionary theory a simple google scholar search yields an extensive library of research on evolution.

https://academic.oup.com/gbe/article/7/5/1296/605886
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/283/5407/1476
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1715338/pdf/ajhg00124-0223.pdf
http://nekhbet.com/king.pdf

https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=hcPSag2pn9IC&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=evolution&ots=LTxgG4P07b&sig=fSJ6CZi_bvr5E0PxsKuJPnDzxHM#v=onepage&q=evolution&f=false

Some Homo Sapiens Related Stuff too:

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/309/5741/1720
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867404011432
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2015.0237

And that's just scratching the surface. I could easily dredge up thousands and thousands of research articles like this. I encourage you to pick one and try to read through it carefully. Note how meticulous and careful the sort of work that is being presented in these papers.

Meanwhile, a google scholar search on creationism will yield hardly any formal literature. Some well written books that don't have a lot of research backing to them, but nevertheless, these are the sort of actual scientific articles you find:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2386841/
https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.genom.4.070802.110400
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/331/6016/404
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2000-08766-011

These articles are not addressing creationism as a theory, but actually addressing the social science, the science of science and communication, aspect of how creationism maintains its strong hold.

You will find the same sort of theme in global warming vs. denialism
And the same thing with flat earth theorists.

A scientist is trained to be a skeptic on everything. Advanced degreed scientists, in their training, spend years working on research projects, only the be scrutinized, criticized, and questioned by their peers on every little nook and cranny on what they have done. Sometimes years of work get shot down by a single devastating question.

Considering this, it should be considered remarkable on how universal the consensus is in science accepting evolutionary theory.

Religion trains you to be faithful and believe, with very limited and vague hard ground truth. It is in fact a sort of challenge to believe, because it isn't obviously clear where its source is, persey. And that's fine.

You can see why I want to separate these two, as these sorts of views are inherently incompatible with one another.

As a scientist, your job is to put everything else aside and play the role of the skeptic. You doubt everything. You criticize everything. You look at the evidence in front of you and you look at it objectively. And not ad hoc willy willy either. Most definitely NOT with what the bible says as an initial "firewall". You look at peer reviewed articles. You look at professionally and meticulously done work with very specific objectives. With the knowledge from the statistical analyses and physical interpretations you obtain from your studies, and after much scrutiny, you then build your ideas from robust analysis which know how to utilize them, and reject the ones that don't.

If you truly want to be a scientist, this is something you will have to come to terms to. I know that it can be really difficult to "doubt" the bible, so to speak, but you HAVE to understand that you cannot be a true scientist unless you are willing to throw away everything you know and accept something different as "truth".

Until you can realize and come to terms with this, it is my duty to reject you as a scientist.

A few more thoughts:

My religious peers can justify evolutionary theory. This is some of their reconciliating thoughts that they have:

Have you considered that the early bible and the miracles of Jesus are meant to be taken allegorically and not literally? Perhaps then, instead of creationism, we should consider that god brought us into existence via his very genetic changes He envisioned?

What is a "year" to god?

The bible you read is at least twice, if not thrice, translated from its original language. Most words between languages are far from being able to match conotatively. There is no such "perfect translation" of the bible, and the true contations of it have probably been lost for centuries.

The books of the bible may have been given by God to the prophets, but they were written by humans. Humans are flawed creatures (even prophets), who may not have fully understood God's word.

Some of my peers are willing to separate their spirituality from the science (which is probably the best solution here), and therefore scientific evolution and spiritual creationism can coexist.

Another note:

Religions themselves debate amongst themselves who is the true religion. Is it Christianity? Islam? Judaism? Hinduism? Buddhism? Baha'i Faith (btw I think baha'i is a really cool concept)? Therefore, just accepting one of these to be irrevocably true and inexplictly intertwined with every aspect of life is just simply inappropriate. By doing so you really don't give any of these other religions any acknowledgement. However, if you are willing to split your frames of reference you can find space to accept and respect all of them.

Edited 2/5/2020 23:43:02

a scientist would never understand faith...


or hope

Edited 2/5/2020 23:50:23

Tacky- that is not true either- my entire argument here has been to completely separate religion and science and think of them in different "frames": a spiritual one, and a physical one.

what i mean is science is hardly the answer to everything, and sometimes you need faith and hope more than science. especially in difficult situations. imagine being Anne Frank.... it can be comforting to believe that there is something after this world and that feeling is very important to many people happiness

whether or not god is real, feelings are, and it is what makes us human...

Edited 2/6/2020 00:44:44

I am sorry, guys, but there is no way I can keep responding to you all in the size and thoroughness that I think is required in a debate like this. I'd love to, but it takes me way too much time (I am already spending more time than I would like to on WZ). It's not that you've asked unanswerable questions; they're no harder than some of the other tricky ones you've ready posted and that I've done my best to reply to. However, to answer them (especially yours, Aura) requires me to write a freaking essay, and I just don't have the time. Especially hard because it's mostly 2v1. 😉 So, although I'd love to keep debating , I think I'm going to have to stop the really detailed responses.
Also, Aura, I hate to say it, but whether you reject me or not, I'm going to be a scientist. 😉

@LND, no. not 2v1.

2v2

That's fine. I've essentially finished what I have to say.

Unfortunately, you face an uphill battle. The reasons for rejection isn't even a personal belief. It's just a matter of fact in science. I'm fine with you being a skeptic on evolution. I'm not fine with the decided lack of it on creationism. It's a scientist's duty to be a skeptic, period the end.

If you are going to a school with any reputation, you are going to have to confront this conflict of interest. And sooner rather than later. You will have a very hard time claiming yourself to be a scientist otherwise.

No, this is no 2v2 argument. This is much bigger than that.

Edited 2/6/2020 13:35:28

given the anthropic principle..... from wiki sense im lazy"The anthropic principle is a philosophical consideration that observations of the universe must be compatible with the conscious and sapient life that observes it. Proponents of the anthropic principle reason that it explains why this universe has the age and the fundamental physical constants necessary to accommodate conscious life. As a result, they believe it is unremarkable that this universe has fundamental constants that happen to fall within the narrow range thought to be compatible with life.[1][2] " so given that you can think about it being unlikely that all of these things happened in evolution, then the likeylihood is not infinitely small, its actually 1.

also
"I could just as easily ask you for evidence that God doesn't exist, and you would be just as (supposedly) unable as me to find any."

to prove a negative is not the same as to prove a positive. exsampel..... prove to me that the spagetti monster(that all of those new atheists are talkiing about) is not real. its not possible.

just on an ending note..... there is much more eveidence for julius ceasers exsistence then of jesus crists.... they even made coins whit his portrait.... you know on those things you pay whit in the hole empire

Edited 2/6/2020 14:18:19

where is the evidence he does not exist

where is the evidence he does not exist

No scientific evidence of God's existence has been found. And the evidence allegedly proving the existence of god is insufficient, therefore we assume that that this hypothetical god doesn't exist.

And if you think that atiests are here to deny every evidence for god then you are very very wrong, I myself am very much open minded and I really wish that a god exists...but the evidence aren't convincing enough. For e.g. which one do you prefer to believe in, bible/quran narrating 'creation of adam and eve' or scientifically proved 'evolution'?

hy·poth·e·sis
noun
a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation.

ie, you need evidence to debunk a hypothesis. if you do not have substantial evidence, it is wrong to say it is false.

@Tac(ky)tical
honey do you know that hypothetical also means: imagined, made up and unreal?

doesn’t mean what i said is wrong. there are aliens in outer space, because there are other planets with evidence of water. who are you to say there aren’t any unless you have evidence...

IMO

ganymedes-

I will once again reiterate: Science should NOT be used to prove or disprove any religion. Science acts independently of religion and neither should be mixed with the other.

And I already laid out thoroughly in this thread why I see it as okay for spiritual creationism and scientific evolution to coexist.. science and religion should not be used to mutually exclude the other. Doing so damages the integrity of the other.

Edited 2/6/2020 20:11:00

if there was a god why would he abide the law of physics anyway ;)

@Aura, make that a 5 billion vs 2 million arguement

You really should not be blanketing all believers in God into one bracket. I ensure you that many dedicated christians have made room for evolution in their beliefs.

We also must remember that many of these people who identify as "Christian" or "Muslim" are only so on a secular level, and are not necessarily committed to their beliefs.

https://ncse.ngo/polling-creationism-and-evolution-around-world

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/313/5788/765.full

Edited 2/6/2020 22:59:42