Give Me Just One

[nailit]

piece of evidence that God exists...just one!
Have just been reading through the posts here on R&S and all I see are (tortuous) apologetics for ones own belief system. We have Theland who pleads with us to find salvation and then disappears. We have goodlife who appears incapable of thinking for himself and just copies and pastes. (typical JW from my experience) and keyplus who views the world through 'koran glasses' and cant even begin to see the world in any other way than that in which he has been brought up in.
All God believers, in my experience, seem to view unbelievers as been willfull sinners. They seem incapable of understanding that others have their own understanding of the world and that God plays no part in it because there is no EVIDENCE.
For the time being, I HAVE to be an honest atheist (or at best agnostic) because I value truth and evidence over faith (and there are so many faiths that I couldnt possibly choose one out of thousands even if I had to.)
SO...... Just one piece of evidence will suffice and then maybe I could take it from there and see if YOUR God might be the way forward.
I thank you.

[Hypognosis]

Why are retinal cells mounted, upside-down with the nerve emerging at the same end as the photons go in?

Is that a "masterpiece of design" or a complete bodge-up?


(I think naomi asked you this question a few weeks ago but I cannot remember which thread that was, nor what your answer was).

[Hypognosis]

Just in case there are any spectators…

Desktop)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_evolution

Mobile)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_evolution


Meanwhile, you offer an alternative hypothesis while accusing evolutionists of lacking imagination.

When and why did this creator *cease* creating new species?
Why does s/he not evidence their existence by creating more, while we watch?
Is s/he content to watch us destroying his/her creatures?

As is routine in these debates, I have to close with: Why create parasitic organisms?

[waterboatman]

Everyone has their own belief and nobody has the right to try and change that. If someone wants to believe in Christianity, Islam, Hindu, The moon's made of green cheese or whatever, it is their choice.

Religion has been the greatest cause of blood letting there has ever been, the cause of more wars and conflicts then any other cause. Which to me, just goes to show the hypocrisy of it.

[sevenOP]

waterboatman, that might be called the 'atheists mantra' :

"According to the Encyclopedia of Wars (Phillips and Axelrod, Facts on File, December 2004) of the 1,763 major conflicts in recorded history, only 123 of them were classified as having been fought over religious differences. That’s just under 7 percent. The encyclopedia also explains that the number of people killed in these conflicts amounts to only 2 percent."

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/11/14/religions-war-cause-responsible-evidence_n_6156878.html

[Khandro]

Hypo; Your ref: "Complex eyes appear to have first evolved within a few million years, in the rapid burst of evolution known as the Cambrian explosion."
Do you really believe that guff? and I thought you said you were not a Wikipediaist.
Regarding the [poor] design of the eye, Have you been reading your Dawkins again? Who are you, or he, to criticise the magnificent design of the eye? The Inuit could see a seal at three miles distance in a snowy landscape, there are aboriginal drawings of the rings of Saturn, and with training it can see the structure of a hair. Poor design ? my ***!

Also, it all depends what you mean by "parasite" my dictionary states "... an organism that lives off another organism and derives subsistence from it without rendering it any service in return". Sound familiar? the greatest parasite on this planet today is Man, go and look at the poor pig kept for life in a pen not large enough for it to turn round in, and I think he might agree with me.

Waterboatman; //Religion has been the greatest cause of blood letting there has ever been, the cause of more wars and conflicts then any other cause.//
Please look up your history before making such a nonsensical statement: the number of deaths caused by religion is insignificant in comparison to the numbers killed in the 20th century alone by non-religious warfare and warped ideologies.

[Hypognosis]

@Khandro

I was curious enough about the inuit eyesight thing to do the arithmetic:

Seal, at 2m long, side-on to the observer
3 miles is about 4368 metres

ATAN(2/4368) (c/o google calculator)

convert radians result to arcseconds

82 arcseconds.

A mysterious page reload purged the edit window of everything else I typed. The inuit thing was just an afterthought.

[Hypognosis]

@Khandro

(attempt 2)

Do I really believe that guff? Well, precambrian is not my area of interest so I don't really need to be concerned about it. If a researcher published sufficiently convincing evidence, supporting some other position - by which I mean large quantities of fresh fossils, spreading the evolution over a longer period of time, for instance - then I would happily jump ship and join the new paradigm.

I am not heavily or emotionally invested in preserving the status quo.

Besides, there are hundreds of other lines of evidence propping up evolution; knocking one strand over does not bring the whole edifice down.

Likewise, disproving creationism does not topple the other (however many) books/chapters of the old and new testament. They have to be countered separately.

[Hypognosis]

@Khandro

I omitted to point out that, just as we see happening around the Pacific rim, in the present day, the ocean floor ***and all the fossils recorded in it*** are destroyed by the subduction zones.

The Atlantic started as a split down the middle of a supercontinent. Since it is 2500+ miles wide now, that's probably how much Pacific sea floor has been subducted and melted down.

The Appalachians and (some of) the mountains of Scotland and Ireland are supposed to have been when a previous ocean was lost, by subduction, between landmasses which joined to form the pre-Atlantic supercontinent. By analagous processes, oceans have 'opened and closed' over the aeons, so the fossil record of life in the deep oceans has been irretrievably erased.

The precambrian fossils in question are mostly sea creatures, from shallow seas and we only find them on land by virtue of their former sea bed now being a 'crumple zone', raised above sea level.

My 'pet' theory is that life evolved at extreme depth where high temperature (hydrothermal vents) and pressure helped drive biological-type chemical reactions and enzymes gradually allowed cooler, less deep waters to be exploited. The need for eyes did not arise until the shallows were reached by many iterations of refinement of enzyme function.

Phototaxis - swimming towards the light is precisely what photosynthetic multicellular life needed to do. Divergence into dedicated plant-like life and plant-eating life seems to have occured after phototaxis came about. Otherwise, it would have to evolve a second time by chance. This is not unknown (eg flight) but the odds of arriving at the same photosensitive proteins (opsins) and their respective DNA sequences would be highly improbable.

The preservation of genes from unicellular life upwards to higher organisms (with minor modifications) somewhat compensates us for the gaps in the fossil record.

[beso]

Hypognosis //Likewise, disproving creationism does not topple the other (however many) books/chapters of the old and new testament. //

Oh yes it does. The Bible claims to be the Word of God. Prove one part wrong than the edifice does indeed collapse.

[Hypognosis]

That's the trouble with setting traps, you never know whether one of your own side is going to fall into it. I thought this thread was down to just me and Khandro.

@Khandro

For the record, no, I have not read any of Dawkins' books. I'm not sure who is target audience is meant to be but I suspect people who already accept the science are not it. They need no further convincing. All I would gain from reading his works is full background detail of the sort of things he says on Twitter or other media outlets. He seems to spend all his time "theist-bashing", these days which seems to be a pretty lucrative gravy train to be on. It's no use me wishing that he was putting his energies into science but there just isn't as much money in it. (Unless your name is Brian Cox, who gets all the TV work (and radio), of late).

[Khandro]

// The Bible claims to be the Word of God. Prove one part wrong than the edifice does indeed collapse.//
Only in the old testament does it state "and God said" and even if this was proven to be incorrect it doesn't dismiss everything else said within it and it certainly doesn't dismiss everything said in the new testament which was "inspired by God".
If one component of anything is not literally correct it doesn't mean the 'entire edifice collapses'.
Lots of great works contain erroneous bits and didn't get everything right, Aristotle got things wrong but he is still considered to be one of the world's greatest of thinkers and we don't dismiss him.