But doesn't that mean scientific evidence? Isn't thsi begging the question somewhat? Athiests believe there is no god based upon their faith that knowlege of a diety, if it does exist, can only be 'proved' via naturalist evidence?
Semantic nitpicking. Evidence is evidence. All atheists need is a
reason to believe that there is a deity, and they will believe. As it is, the only "evidence" of any deity's existance is a bunch of old books and some people who believe what the books say. THat's not evidence, and so atheists have no reason to conclude that a god exists.
The article your referenced doesn't seem to be a concrete proof of anything. Your blurb mentions the simple cell walls still have complex and 'rather costly biosynthesis'. It really does nothing to explain or definitavely suggest how these complexes first formed or how the support machines for the building and maintence of these walls first formed.
Read it again. It spoke of cells that do not have cell walls, but instead have a primitive barrier - not quite a cell wall, but apparently a precursor.
It seems it is an unsupported belief that it must have happened via purposeless evolution.
Incorrect. Evolution, being a scientific theory, makes certain predictions as to what we should see if its mechanism actually occurs. When we see something like a precursor cell wall, it validates those predictions. We similarly validate the predictions of evolution when we look at vestigial organs, and the different forms of organs that are slightly different in various species but are still the same feature (like mammalian eyes).
Again, what is the evidence life arose from purely natural processes? We have evidence of adaptive behavior and different lines of fossils and such, but surely you don't mean these?
My evidence is the spontaneous formation of amino acids in a laboratory recreating the conditions of the early Earth. This suggests that it is entirely likely that life could spontaneously form, first in the form of a self-replicating molecule, and eventually developing into a true single-celled organism through the process of evolution.
Since there is NO evidence of the supernatural existing, and there IS evidence that suggests abiogenesis was possible, the latter is the more probable, and Occams Razor cuts out the former.
I think invoking the supernatural to pigeonhole any notion that a god exists is a little misleading. Before we could measure and detect electro-magnetic forces, did they exist?
Of course it did - and we saw EVIDENCE of such a force in the form of the compass, or lodestones. People saw but did not yet understand.
The difference is that thus far there is not magical "force" or whatever to suggest that a deity may exist. It's not that we don't understand something, as was the case with electromagnetism, there is simply nothing there to investigate.
Is the theory of all mass infinately compressed into a point of singularity scientific? It is based on the scientific observation that the universe is expanding?
Um...Yes.
Basically, this is what design theorists are proposing: That observable and testable qualities of intelligence can be detected in life's most basic structures. Please show me where any of them appeal to the supernatural in making their inferences.
The fact that an inteliigence guiding evolution while somehow remaining unseen and undetectable even in cases where we directly observe evolution in progress is like proposing that magic fairies do it when we aren't looking.
The real evidence is that intelligent design is bunk - many organisms, including humans, have such horrible "design" flaws that any designer would have to have been an idiot. We breathe through the same tube that we eat with - meaning we can easily choke on our food. Our appendix is a completely useless organ that actually poses a high risk of infection, and can kill if it is not removed. Our eyes are horribly inefficient and poorly "designed" compared to certain birds, and even some aquatixc species - certain parts of our eyes are actually
backwards.
I could go on if needed, but this thread isn't about ID. I think this is enough to show that no deity is required, and if a deity DID directly design every species, he did a horrible job on quite a few of them.
Again, what is the evidence to the contrary for abiogenesis? Where has any scientist shown that say, amino acids produced in a controlled experiment could form into highly specialized structures which contain information for self-replication?
That's not what the experiment was set up to confirm. The experiment was only intended to show that the building blocks themselves could have been present - meaning abiogenesis should be possible.
Harvard is now setting up a new department for the specific study of abiogenesis - perhaps we'll see more experiments along these lines soon.
I see a lot of speculation, but precious little in the way of evidence.
You mean with religion? That's what I see, too.
Of course, the lack of evidence is exactly WHY atheism exists in the first place - if there is NO evidence, and no observable reason to believe in something, then such belief is irrational.
Every time a fundy breaks the laws of thermodynamics, Schroedinger probably kills his cat.
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