Use of Science to Support Creationism

...3 cells? I'm only familiar with two types of cells: plant cells and animal cells.What's the third? And moreover, don't you think the fact that all cells have essentially the same organelles is pretty clear evidence that they're related, somehow?

I think what he's asking is, if a new culture, ignorant of the Bible and all Hebrew/Christian culture, tried to develop origin stories about the origin of life, would they come up with anything at all like the Book of Genesis?A similar question is "if Noah had escaped an asteroid instead of a flood in the Bible story, would the creationists really be trying to prove the flood?"Personally I don't find these to be fair questions; creationists believe that the stories in the Bible represent an underlying historical reality, so naturally they would propose that if the Bible were written again, with God dictating again, it would come out about the same, no matter who God was dictating to.

Right. That's the proof for atheism - there's no reason to believe in God.Yeah, yeah, agnostics. I hear you muttering. But here's the thing - there's a whole fuckton of things that there is no reason to believe in, like invisible ninjas or spectral tapiers or honest Republicans. But I don't see agnostics going around sitting on those fences; they're as content as the rest of us to relegate those to the "not going to worry about it" pile.But, for some reason, to agnostics, God gets special treatment. Even though they're "atheist" about everything else with exactly the same amount of evidence for, they're oh-so-careful to set God apart.Get over yourselves, agnostics. There's no difference between your beliefs and atheism.

No, we don't.We don't conclude that the absence of evidence for God means that there is no God. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. We don't carry it any further than agnostics do.Agnostics are atheists, but they're afraid to admit it.

The possibility of invisible ninjas, or the possibility of God?

Congratulations, you're an atheist.

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"What gets me is all the mean things people say about Secular Humanism without even taking the time to read some of our basic scriptures, such as the Bill of Rights or Omni magazine." - Barbara Ehrenreich

Who said you did? I'm satisified that you're an atheist if you believe the existence of God is as unlikely as any of the other imaginary things we invent around here.

Yes. Agreed. But atheism isn't the position that there is an absence of gods. It's the position that there is an absence of evidence for gods, and having enough confidence about that to say so.This message has been edited by crashfrog, 11-02-2004 06:52 PM

Or, "agnostic atheist", like we both are.I will grant you that there are atheists that overreach, and claim to know for sure that the supernatural doesn't exist. These people are equally irrational, or maybe non-science minded, as folks on the other side of the spectrum of belief.