Abiogenesis (Origins)

by broken_cynic , Wednesday, August 03, 2011, 18:09 (4650 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

Balance_Maintained: "Then perhaps you miss out on comments by front line atheists like Dawkins and Hawking."-If you care to put forward particular comments (context appreciated as well) then I'll be happy to offer my own take/response. Atheism is anything but a dogmatic monolith and I'm not under any obligation to stand by all statements by all atheists, no matter how famous they are. I think well of Dawkins and Hawking, and even moreso of Hitchens and Harris, and while I wouldn't argue too strongly with Dawkins on evolution, Hawking on cosmology or Harris on neuroscience, still I can easily come up with major points on which I disagree with each of them. If you insist on trying to address me by way of third parties, then I would suggest you try PZ Myers or Daniel Dennett as my views tend to line up pretty well with theirs. However, even in those two cases, they are their own individuals as am I, and I may not agree even with them on all particulars. How about you present a specific comment (your own or someone else's) and we go from there?-> "Atheism that rejects abiogenesis on earth is merely pushing the problem further back in time, not changing the problem..."-Agreed. Thus my reference to 'somewhere down the line' in the comment you quoted.-> "...and ultimately it become a matter of faith with Chance as your god of gaps."-There's a difference between having faith in the fantastic in the absence of evidence and accepting (tentatively, pending new evidence) the evidence at hand and the conclusions that appear when you apply the law of parsimony to that evidence.-> "Again, read some of the so-called Atheists works by 'scientists', not media hounds, like Dawkins and Hawking and then tell me I am wrong, disingenuous, or dishonest. You sir, I think are being dishonest, but not with me, with yourself. In fact, a book written by a so-called atheist scientist was entitled The God Delusion. You do not get much more blatant or straight from the horses mouth than that."-I have read 'The God Delusion.' Beyond that, what do you consider to be "the so-called Atheists works by 'scientists', not media hounds?" You seem to want to be dismissive of them and yet at the same time you are saying that I should be reading them? There is a big difference between the work a scientist writes on the subject of their professional expertise and the work they write on the subject of religion and/or atheism. No book on the subject of atheism that I have read stakes their conclusions on the author's authority, as a scientist or otherwise.-What exactly am I supposed to be telling you that you are wrong about? You didn't address much of anything I said about the idea that the way public understanding of science develops might be more complicated than just 'what scientists say' beyond a general 'nuh uh!' and I'm a little confused as to what point you're even trying to make at this point.