Hi Dan S,

I suppose if I had to choose I would say I’m 99.999% sure. I suppose I’m just saying I think it’s dangerous to talk about things in terms of 100% certainties. It forces us to keep thinking.

This is not a debating trick or about splitting hairs.

It’s quite straight forward. Nick Moodie claims to be quite strong in scepticism and uncertainty. He almost boasts in them. However, I’ve found atheists to be rather selective when applying these skills or qualities, with special blind spots in regards to their account of evolution. At this point scepticism becomes a luxury they can’t afford.

In school children are taught that hydrogen, following long periods (14 billion years, Per.) of time and improbable events, became people. And they’re discouraged from applying scepticism towards this account.

Dan,

<<...I’ve found atheists to be rather selective when applying these skills or qualities, with special blind spots in regards to their account of evolution.>>

Interesting point considering you’ve never been able to point out what any of these aspects of evolution are that those who accept it (which are not just atheists by the way) need to apply “special blind spots” to.

Care to list them for us now?

<<In school children are taught that hydrogen, following long periods (14 billion years, Per.) of time and improbable events, became people. And they’re discouraged from applying scepticism towards this account.>>

Since when have children ever been discouraged from applying scepticism? Please inform us of what the methods are used to discourage children from applying scepticism?

The point you continuously seem to miss, Dan, is that rejecting Creationism doesn’t mean forgoing scepticism especially considering Creationism has been conclusively and unequivocally debunked in its entirety.

As I’ve mentioned to you a few times before, it is a false dichotomy to assume that if evolution is false, then Creationism, by default, becomes true.

I guess the really interesting thing about all this, is the mental processes employed.

Dan S de Merengue opines...

>>In school children are taught that hydrogen, following long periods (14 billion years, Per.) of time and improbable events, became people. And they’re discouraged from applying scepticism towards this account.<<

The key difference is that we evolutionists start in the year 2010, and work backwards. Every year, it seems, we get a slightly clearer view of what actually went on in our past, thanks to the efforts of science and technology.

It wasn't that long ago that we were only able to see the stars with the naked eye, helped along by a couple of judiciously placed pieces of glass. Now we have all sorts of "telescopes" that measure a wide variety of wavelengths, and allow us to see stuff that happened billions of years ago, billions of light-years away.

In the fullness of time, if the human race is lucky enough to survive long enough, science and technology will start to complete the picture on "how hydrogen became people". (I didn't bother to look that one up - is that really how creationists think?).

In the meantime we work with the knowledge we have, which is generally enough for the bulk of intelligent beings.

Creationists, on the other hand, can only work forward, from a date that they worked out from something they read in a book.

Which, I would suggest, puts them at a slight disadvantage.

Incidentally, Dan S de Merengue...

>>At this point scepticism becomes a luxury they can’t afford.<<

At what point in the Creationist story do you, personally, employ scepticism?

Dan,

My response to this version of the Argument from Personal Incredulity is simply this: how do you know what hydrogen can accomplish in fourteen billion years? How much personal experience do you have of developments in hydrogen over long periods of time, and how does this experience lead you to believe that hydrogen CAN'T 'produce people'? How many cases of hydrogen sitting around for fourteen billion years do you know of, and what proportion of them failed to produce 'people' or something like them?

The fact that you find it hard to imagine says more about the paucity of your imagination than it does about the probability of the event.

Dan,

Is everything *still* hydrogen? No? Go look up an encyclopaedia as to why.

Why did you make a fatuous statement? To make christians look dumb?

If I roll a six with a normal die, that is only 1/6. If I use 6 dice, it approaches certainty that *one* of them will be six.

Lots of atoms in the universe. The mass of organic molecules that have formed in interstellar clouds is immense. Improbable? only in the absense of energy.

Why pretend organic molecules cannot exist by simple means? To make literalist dogma look dumb?

Now, you chemical illiterate, You go and get an education and come back and tell *me* why your statements are wrong. *we* know. Pastor may have misinformed *you* though.

Go on. Just do it.

Like runner, you are not worth instructing. If you don't do it yourself, you will remain irrelevant.

Rusty