What details do you want?
Lots of people believe the fine tuning argument. Itās certainly not laughable, and for all we know, Earth is a āGoldilocksā planet where every nook and cranny is filled with life. Scientists have found and will continue to find other āearthlikeā planets out there theoretically capable of supporting life, but until we actually visit them and collect samples (a highly unlikely proposition given the distances), weāll never have evidence. Personally, Iām not a fine-tuning guy and I despise the Discovery Institute, but when I look around this world of ours, my intuition says it was created for a purpose.
Itās also not laughable to believe the historical evidences for the Resurrection. Lots of people you talk to every day in this space believe in them too, yet somehow you manage to talk to us without being a jerk. I know you can do it. Just try.
There are all sorts of different worldviews represented here. Expect to be challenged, but you can also insist that the rules for āGracious Dialogueā be enforced when someone is out of line or harassing you. Just hit the three dots underneath the message and then hit the flag icon for the moderators to address it.
Welcome, by the way.
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I didnāt say it was.[1]
If youād quoted all of my post, not just the second half of it, it would be clear that I wasnāt laughing at fine-tuning.
Can evidence of life be found without having to visit the planets?
IIRC looking at the absorption spectra of light from the planetsā stars that has passed through the planetsā atmospheres can allow us to see whether those atmospheres contain any molecules that are found on Earth only or mainly as by-products of lifeās metabolisms.
(Weāre too far away to use the best method of finding life without visiting: artificial light sources visible on the side of the planet away from the sun.)
Agreed. But it is laughable to ask lots of questions about other peopleās epistemology and standards of evidence yet shy away from disclosing your own or discussing or even mentioning evidence.
I did with @DesperateEC at first too, despite his āatheists are meanā opening. But the āI wonāt provide evidence because (i) youāre just going to label it as non-evidence and (ii) Iām not interested in rebuttals, but you are the one who isnāt engaging properlyā schtick is never going to result in anything worthwhile.
Though some versions definitely are. ā©ļø
To adhere to the old cry āad fontesā, I return to the original post.
I come from a different direction than most ā I really donāt care a huge amount about what science says; my foundation is the text, so I say āstick with the textā.
Of course that requires allowing the text to be what it is, which is a collection of ancient literature of various genres from various periods though with a unifying worldview behind it. There are various routes to dive into this, but to skip the nerdy details Iāll just say this: nothing in the Hebrew text of Genesis or any other part of the Tanakh (OT) rules out evolution. In fact, one of the great objections made by many (who fail to treat the text as what it is) is that evolution requires ādeep timeā, yet some of the first proponents of deep time historically were biblical scholars who on the basis of the text concluded that the world is vastly ancient beyond comprehension, assigning millions or billions of years (with a fascinating outlier who set it at a trillion [10^12]). Worth noting is that long before the telescope was invented scholars concluded, from Genesis, that the earth is old beyond counting ā that the cosmos began as the smallest possible thing, that it expanded rapidly beyond imagining, that as it expanded the fluid (āwatersā) that comprised it thinned until light could flow, and that all this took place incomprehensibly long, long ago.
Then of course thereās the fact that God did NOT, according to Genesis, make individual living things, rather He commanded the earth and the sea to ābring forthā, and they made the living things.
As for the atheists who attack the Bible, I have yet to encounter one who follows the rule of treating the text as what it is; they stand with the YEC notion that the text has to be read as though it was written in modern times with a MSWV for its framework. The best way to respond to them is, āWhy wonāt you treat the Bible as what it is ā ancient literature?ā
As for both groups, who are really the same in the way they treat the Bible, why would you care about points made from ignorance? Theyāre little different from a child who talks about the morphology of the moon on the basis that it is made of cheese.
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Both of these complain because their POV rests on the assumption that science and Christianity are incompatible and just by being EC you are challenging that assumption.
Science rests on objective observation. Life requires subjective participation. Science functionally limits itself to claims which can be established by measurable evidence. Claiming to live your life in this way by science (objective observation) alone is just plain delusional. Life is coping and while science can help with some solutions to some problems, it cannot tell you how to live. At most science can simply show us that the numbers of ways to live (in all the species of this planet) are vast. So to be sure there are corrections from science which should be accepted as only what is reasonable. And this observation of science is a good example ā Christianity as authoritarian dictation of what everyone must believe and how everyone must live is unreasonable.
Is it really that they wonāt see your point of view, or is it that they express your point of view, or your epistemological approach is not compelling or valid for them personally? There is a difference between expecting people to say āI understand your perspectiveā and "I agree your perspective is right (or good, or valid, or warranted, or logical, or whatever evaluative term you want to use). It is true that lots of people donāt actually want to understand other peopleās perspectives. But itās also true that lots of people will not stop harping on their points if they havenāt convinced the other people of who is right and who is wrong. Nobody is required to engage your view āproperlyā by your estimation. They can be charitable or not and they can be curious or not, but they donāt have to grant your givens or prove to you that you are wrong and they are right in order to have a different view they want to discuss.
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Fine, we all try hard to maintain a narrative, whether we exercised much agency in picking it or not. The point is that all of us are interpreting reality and deciding what we think is true from a specific social location and with respect to our attachments and communities. None of us is standing on some kind of neutral ground and objectively evaluting truth and evidence from the outside. Itās always easier to point out other peopleās biases than to recognize our own.
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You must have missed the part where he said he didnāt start the thread to debate. So it isnāt really appropriate to come into a conversation about feelings, tell someone their feelings are wrong, and demand people debate better. You made your points. I donāt think we need to turn this into some kind of coupleās therapy session where you fuss about the OPs perceived communication failures and insist he work on managing his tone so as not to hurt the feelings of atheists, thatās not productive.
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There seems to be a need to justify or prove a position or belief, That may apply to science or academia but not to faith and religion. Faith is very personal and difficult to pin down where it might have started or blossomed. Unfortunately the reverse is rarely true. Loss of faith or antagonism towards it is all to easily identifiable and explainable.
Richard
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Something along those lines could be developed in the future, but all we really can know is that an Earth-like planet is giving off signs of life until we visit. Is it intelligent life? Is it oceans filled with plankton or dry land filled with plants? Out of the billions of planets out there that may be capable of supporting life, itās hard to know how many actually have living creatures and whether the planet has the capacity for life to flourish or just to survive.
Maybe not, but itās the guyās first thread. Give him a chance to get his feet under him before you write him off or drive him away.
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A lot of the militant atheists on social media are former YEC Christians who continue to take the Bible literally, and the remainder take it literally because it makes an easier target.
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I was with you until the end, but this is very uncharitable. I have never met a single person who lost their faith because they were too stupid, or too selfish or liked sinning too much, or whatever it is that you are insinuating here. Losing faith is just as complicated and personal as coming to faith. It is usually not something people describe as a decision or an act under a personās willful control, and itās often traumatic.
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I think you read me wrong.
There wss no judgmentalism or criticism intended.
People lose faith because they see reality as not living up to their beliefs. The loss of a loved one being the most common.
Richard
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And just to clarify.
Atheism has nothing to do with sin or Christian doctrine.
Most atheists I have met are quite happy to accept the possibility of God but see no reality or need for He/she/it.
Richard
Evolutionary creationism runs up against the horrors of this mindless, unguided process. Julia thinks it laughable that anyone would think God had anything to do with evolution. āItās horrible,ā is what I remember Julia saying.
The origin of life is shrouded in mystery. How did life start? No one knows but that doesnāt mean scientists are completely lost. Thereās the hydrothermal vent hypothesis. A particular view of life as a process of carbon hydrogenation predicts them. One of many times science is indistinguishable from magic.
I honeslty dont see a problem theologically any more than for anyone else. Whos Julia? Lol
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Julia is an atheist whoās given some thought to the issue of God and evolution. As an apex predator or Dr. Pangloss you might not see the theological problems with evolution. I also saw no problems until I was around 8. 
Okay im not sure who Dr Pangloss is either. But it sounds like you buy into the black and white dichotomy of science vs religio?
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It isnāt me. Itās the way science has edged out religion over time. No rain gods, just weather reports; no fertility gods, just a good fertility clinic; no demons, just nasty bugs, and so on.
Most historians and philosophers reject the conflict thesis.
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