(split) Atheism and acceptance of science

1) is without evidence or justification. 2) is meaningless; 3) is without evidence or justification; 4 ) is irrelevant 5) is simply ordinary fact; 6) contradicts 4 and 5, and is without evidence or justification.

And we agree that such an argument is bootless, true?

 

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Who is we?

 

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No, some of his statements are implied conclusions...not entirely how he *establishes* the incompatibility of science and atheism.

 

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You and me, the general public of reasoning.

 

Agreed...however the rest of the universe aside from this planet is inaccessible to observation.

Therefore we simply dont know how much life exists.

 

I dont believe the general public has enough education in physics and biology to make that conclusion.

I certainly dont.

 

can't be any more ridiculous than saying "things become alive".

i like to know what it is that leads to the conclusion that things become alive.
there is no evidence at all, anywhere, that leads to that conclusion.
every single time scientists have tried to prove this conclusion they fail.

 

Why -- so you can dismiss it out of hand like you do every argument that contradicts your ill-conceived worldview?

I'm not letting you bait me into another facepalm festival. Take your trolling behavior somewhere else.

 

Science doesnt say "things become alive".

It says livings things appear, as defined by thousands of molecules colluding into self-replicating organisms...by random chance.

 

uh, WHAT???
1000s of scientists the world over back up the claim "life comes from life"
1000s of scientists the world over have never seen life coming from non life.
so, it isn't just MY world veiw.

 

correct. science says life comes from life.

abiogenesis says that.

 

Not by "random chance" alone. By processes such as evolutionary development, as well.

 

Evolutionary development has to start somewhere...thats what I was referring to.

 

Processes such as evolutionary development are a property of the inanimate as well as the animate world, and all gradations between. The concept of "random chance" is really difficult, full of pitfalls - one cannot have too much care.

Collins's argument is fatuous, really - an example of what a particular set of constraints or program of conditioning imposed on acceptable thinking can do to an otherwise first class mind.

 

Are you declaring that evolutionary "development" is a process?

 

If you're referring to childhood conditioning there was no religious element in his upbringing. He was an atheist throughout his university education in physics and medicine.

 

No, evolutionary development is not applicable to inanimate matter.

Evolution requires a code of living replication...which is variable through mutation.

 

Yes, it is. All the Darwinian form requires is replication with variation and in a context of selective culling - clays do that, crystals do that, various other inanimate conglomerations of stuff do that, and they can evolve accordingly. (The Lamarckian form requires reactionary acquisition of features and selective culling. I can't think of any inanimate examples of that outside of computer setups, but there's nothing ruling them out of the "natural" world in theory).

That's not a "declaration", I hope. Of course it's a process.

Not necessarily. And whether or not he was personally atheistic in his teens is irrelevant - I'm not asserting he was the source of the constraints and conditioning.

He has claimed to have been swayed by the arguments in "Mere Christianity", by CS Lewis, for instance. I have read that book, and if someone has been swayed by it they are accepting arguments and approaches that cripple reason in this matter.

 

How do you reach that conclusion? What makes evolutionary "development" a process?

 

Clays and crystals are not life forms with a genetic code of replication...which is variable through mutation.