Atheist and Darwinian Science and Story Telling, part 1 of 9

Proving in a laboratory that life can come from nonliving substances does NOT automatically prove that intelligent design is correct, and it is NOT intended to prove that it can happen naturally, either. What's being tested is whether or not the occurrence is possible.

It is not yet absolutely certain, but more than 15 of the 20 amino acids necessary for life have indeed been created from nonliving materials.

The past is not inaccessible. We can observe the evidence left behind from past events. What we interpret from that evidence tells us things about what happened during that time, and we can imply from other fields of understanding in order to create a more complete picture of the past. One does not have to see someone walk across snow in order to infer from the footprints that someone has indeed walked there. That's essentially what paleontologists and archaeologists do.

The future is also not completely beyond our understanding. You imply that we cannot understand anything about the future. Why, then, do we have weather forecasts? We combine the current evidence with past experiences that had similar evidence, and predict that the same thing will happen again. We're not always right, but we have a far better track record than simple guesswork.

Do things not change in the world? As we speak, the polar ice caps are diminishing. Uniformitarianism does not mean that everything is always the same, just the underlying processes. A good example is the difference between a tornado and a nice cool breeze. Both involve the movement of the atmosphere, but a tornado is the result of a very large storm, caused by a large warm front colliding with a large cold front. Wind involves the same process, but at a much smaller scale and does not need inclement weather of any kind. Another example would be a meat grinder and a shaved ice machine. Both utilize the same technology, but very different materials go in and come out.

You state that the past and the future are unknown. Yet you expect your sky-daddy-made-the-world-in-a-week theory to hold up better. We have evidence that has been tested and examined time and again, that points invariably to a five billion year old Earth and a theory of evolution that has withstood a hundred and fifty years of scrutiny. What do you have? A book. A book that has as much proven material in it as a Harry Potter novel.

"Atheists of this sort appeal to inaccessible, unobserved, un-experimented upon, ideal and self-service concepts and replace evidence for imagination.
As long as they can imagine it, it must be true: this appears to be what Richard Dawkins meant by being an intellectually fulfilled atheist." You have your labels confused. Theists are the ones who deny evidence that does not suit your purposes. I'm an atheist, and if you give me proof of the existence of your god (as opposed to the thousands of other religious organizations that claim the exact same things yours does), that outweighs all of the overwhelming evidence in favor of evolution and abiogenesis, then I will happily join the church and put my faith in God and Jesus Christ. However, up to this point I have seen nothing but blind faith and false hope in a book that most do not even read.

When did you hear anyone say that science disproves the supernatural? Not having evidence to support a claim does not make the opposite of that claim true, which is the logical fallacy that you are hinting at. Show me where anyone who follows the scientific method has said that science disproves the supernatural, because until I see the claim myself, I will not believe it. However, I do not immediately dismiss the possibility that someone has said it.

"Granted, they are, after all, atheists—absolutely committed to materialism." You think that all atheists are materialists? What is Buddhism? Jainism? Both are godless religions, and there are more. These are atheistic religions that also have beliefs in nonmaterialistic aspects of existence. I am a materialist. So are many outspoken atheists and secular humanists. But that does not give you the right to assume without any research that all atheists are "committed to materialism". The only thing I "commit" myself to is evidence. And until evidence is uncovered that there is anything beyond the material world, I shall retain my materialistic belief.

Your assertion that materialists make an assertion that a supernatural world does not exist is mistaken. I do not assert anything, and I am not alone. Ignoring evidence that counters my current understanding is not something that I do, and it is not something any scientist should do. Most of them do not. You, on the other hand, are doing exactly that. Either that, or you are not researching any of this information before you rant about it. Neither possibility is very promising.

Scientists envision a time where something exists that is now impossible, eh? That's very true. The earth has changed considerably over the past few billion years. When the first life forms are believed to have formed, the landscape was mostly volcanic wasteland, and everything else was open sea. The air had very trace amounts of oxygen. It was very much like your idea of Hell. But conditions such as these were much better suited to the formation of life than the oxygen-rich earth we now inhabit. If you would LEARN about this type of thing before you dismissed it as utter bullshit because it disagrees with your fairy tale, you would very likely not even be posting this excrement in the first place.

When are you going to reply to any of my comments? If you can't even stand up to an adolescent's arguments, then you don't need to be posting vulgarities such as these in the first place.