Creation, Evolution, and faith

If memory serves, Darwin only mentions this once in "Origin of Species". It can be found in the last sentence of the last paragraph of the last chapter. It reads,

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There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

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You can read the entire book online here. The online version makes it a little easier to do word searches.So Darwin hints at a theistic or deistic start for life, and from that point evolution takes over. Darwin didn't really deal with the origin of life, just the origin of biodiversity.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

It relies on making risky predictions, and then testing those predictions. Scientific theories are not based on reason. They are based on empiricism. If theories were based on reason then we wouldn't have Quantum Mechanics. Can you give an example? Example?

Can you give examples of this evidence and reasoning? I see a lot of assertions, but no reasoning. Care to explain?

Again, can you please outline this reasoning? I simply don't see it. As others have pointed out Acts 17 contains a long list of baseless assertions. That is not reasoning. Paul simply begs the question by putting the conclusion in the premises. I wasn't aware that the rules of logic have changed in the ensuing 2,000 years.

That is stubborness, not faith. Don't you mean a prior commitment to Papal inerrancy based on religious faith? Was Galileo placed under house arrest for the remainder of his years because Academia disagreed with him?

Then in that case "religious faith" involves assuming God exists and assuming God has specific characteristics with no evidence or reasoning to back it up.

But it should at least address the question at hand. Acts 17 doesn't do that. Let's use Leprechauns as an example. You ask me why you should believe in Leprechauns. My well thought out and reasoned argument is "Leprechauns are mischievous and green". See how I have completely jumped past the question? This is exactly what Paul has done in Acts 17. He completely jumps past the question "What reason do we have for thinking that your god exists" to a long list of God's characteristics.Let's look at the very first line of reasoning that Paul uses in Acts 17:24

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The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands.

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What line of reasoning did Paul follow to reach this conclusion? How is this anything other than a bald assertion?

You are shifting the goal posts. You are the one who claimed that theists use reason and logic to support their contention that God exists. Now you are saying that logic and reason are no good. You need to make up your mind. Burden of Proof fallacy. You are the one who claimed that theists use reason and logic to demonstrate that their God exists in the same way that scientists use reason and logic. It is up to YOU to supply the evidence of this. The burden of proof is on you.

If reason and logic do not lead to valid arguments, or at least determine if an argument is valid or not, then why would theists use reason? Could you give an example of an argument that your definition of "reason" would not cover? Looking back I found two references to faith and science.1. "Scientists "believe" that their theories are true. Their "faith" in their theories relies on reason."This one fails. Scientists can demonstrate that their theories are accurate through experimentation. No faith needed. Also, the road of science is littered with discarded hypotheses. If science worked through faith no hypothesis would be discarded.2. "There are numerous cases in science where new data comes in, but scientists are unwilling to accept this new data because of prior intellectual commitment to a theory."In this case you seem to be indicating that faith and science do not work together.So I will ask again. Can you give an example of faith and reason working together in a way that supports faith? I don't want to badger you. That is not my intent. The only reason I keep asking is I sense you have a thoughtful and interesting answer. I have read CS Lewis and other religious philosophers. There are interesting discussions to be had. However, Acts 17 fell short of that and by your own admission.

You were the one who seemed to be casting doubt on the effecacy of reason and logic. If I misunderstood you then I apologize. I am trying to get an idea of what your criteria is for "reason" and "not reason". For example, if I said "Clover is green, therefore Leprechauns exist" would you consider that a reasoned argument? Since faith is a belief held in the absence of evidence then having evidence would negate the need for faith. It really is that simple. Or would you have us think that a belief in a deity is on par with believing that germs cause disease?The problem we seem to be having here is a conflation of belief and faith, not to mention the multiple definitions of both. You want to claim that believing that germs cause infectious disease is on the same level as believing in unevidence, invisible, supernatural deities. It's not the same, no matter how you slice it. The former is born of massive amounts of experimentation and demonstration. The latter is not. Without faith there is no religious belief. Science can only work without faith.If faith did operate in science then we wouldn't have Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, or oxidation. Instead we would have Newtonian gravity, classical physics, and phlogiston. These earlier theories were thrown out not because people lacked faith in them but because the evidence, the demonstration through experimentation, pointed elsewhere. Likewise, modern theories did not gain consensus because of an appeal to faith or reason, but an appeal to evidence.Science starts with evidence. Religion starts with faith. That is the difference. Could you take one of those reasoned arguments and break them down into premises and conclusion? It doesn't have to be anything extensive, just a simple summary. But this is not what happens with religious belief. In religion you gain converts by an appeal to emotion, not an appeal to evidence or experimentation. Acts 17 shows exactly that. The entire proposition is based on faith, faith that this entity exists in the first place. No such faith is needed in science. You can demonstrate that a thing exists. Science is based on facts, not faith.

For the age of the Earth the evidence is radiometric dating and knowledge of how sediments are produced. High amounts of potassium derived argon or uranium derived lead in rocks is evidence of their age. No amount of faith will change these ratios in rocks. The age of the Earth is not a presupposition, it is a conclusion drawn from evidence using the scientific method. If you are looking for presuppositions you need to try again.Hing: These presuppositions in science do exist, but they are not what you think they are. The age of the prints is established by the ratio of isotopes in rocks above and below the footprints. It is not assumed. Here is an analogy for you. In a murder trial the prosecuting attorney presents a case that includes DNA evidence, fingerprint evidence, fiber evidence, footprint evidence, and tire track evidence all linking the defendant to the murder victim. The defense attorney claims that the prosecutor has no evidence and is merely assuming that the defendant is guilty. The defense attorney then goes on to say that it is just as likely that the victim was killed by Leprechauns since both the defense attorney and the prosecution are using assumptions. Is this a valide defense? Is ignoring all the evidence at hand an honest way to approach this case?

The presuppositions of science are rather bland. They include such ideas that we can trust what we see, that the laws of nature do not change arbitrarily in either space or time, and that nature can be understood rationally. That's it. They are the same presuppositions that allow you to go to sleep at night and know that you will wake up on your bed and not the ceiling. The same presuppositions that allow you to brush your teeth in the morning knowing that the toxicity of sodium flouride will be the same tomorrow as it was today. They are the same presuppositions that allow you to push down on your brake pedal and know that steel will not suddenly turn into the consistancy of spaghetti.If you want to argue that we can not trust what we observe, and that nature is not rational, then we can argue about the validity of the presuppositions of science.

Here is what I said before: "laws of nature do not change arbitrarily in either space or time." The important bit here is "arbitrarily". Before these laws were discovered it was entirely possible that they could have changed over time or space. However, science assumes that they will change in a rational and describable way, not arbitrarily.As for the speed of light specifically, the equation E=mc^2 allows us to make predictions about what we should see if the speed of light were different in the past. An increase or decrease in the speed of light would correlate with an increase or decrease in the energy output of stars, just as one example. No such change is seen in any galaxy that has been looked at. The constancy of the speed of light is not assumed. It is a conclusion drawn from mountains of evidence. You might want to read up on the Oklo reactors. These are natural nuclear reactors that went critical billions of years ago. The decay products are exactly what we would expect to see if the decay rates were the same billions of years ago. Like the speed of light, the constancy of decay rates is also supported by mountains of evidence. It is not assumed.

That's exactly what the first geologists did in the early 1800's. Guess what? They abandoned this assumption because the actual geologic record told a very different story. They were never able to find a global flood layer. What they found instead was literal mountains of evidence for slow geologic processes, not to mention multiple ages where glaciation was the major erosive process. They found the exact opposite of what one should find if Noah's flood occurred in the past. It wasn't faith that lead them to conclude that the Earth was ancient, much older than Usher's calculations suggested. Even before Holmes first proposed radiometric dating the consensus among geologists was that the Earth had to be at least 100 million years old, and probably much older. So when a crime scene investigator finds a person's DNA, fingerprints, shoe prints, and fibers at the scene of a crime are they only guessing that this person was at the scene of the crime?Your argument has taken quite a turn. First, you tell us that scientists do not have any evidence for anything so they are just assuming things. When it is made obvious that there is indeed evidence you are now arguing that evidence doesn't matter. Evidence is just a guess. If you want to approach this topic honestly then deal with the evidence, don't discount it. Just because your ideas of how old the Earth are are based on faith does not mean that scientists use faith to determine the age of the Earth as well. Other than faith, what reason is there to include Noah's flood as a geologic event?

Theories do not rest on presuppositions. They rest on the evidence.