JP,

Your god is a god of the gaps in human knowledge. Considering that 400 yrs ago man thought the sun revolved around the earth, 200 years ago evolution was just considered as a concept, about 60 years ago there were no computers and DNA had not been discovered. 30+ years ago, it was shown that amino acids (building blocks of DNA and protein) could arisen from primordial conditions, etc.

When I was at school the pastor said that computers would never surpass the computing power of the human brain. That threshold has already been passed. Artificial intelligence is advancing every day, and while sentience is still a long way off, when it comes it is likely to be very different to what we expect from Scifi movies.

I took notice of your caveat that even if man created life that it would not prove that life arose by itself. This is a major cop out, and is basically saying "it doesn't matter what evidence you have, I choose to ignore it."

AJ Philips – you say that no one believes that everything came from nothing. Here are a few scientists, including Richard Dawkins, who disagree.

"The fact that life evolved out of nearly nothing, some 10 billion years after the universe evolved out of literally nothing is a fact so staggering that I would be mad to attempt words to do it justice." Richard Dawkins, "The Ancestor's Tale"

"Even if we don't have a precise idea of exactly what took place at the beginning, we can at least see that the origin of the universe from nothing need not be unlawful or unnatural or unscientific." Paul Davies, physicist, Arizona State University

"It is now becoming clear that everything can – and probably did – come from nothing." Robert A. J. Matthews, physicist, Ashton University, England.

You also claim that “No one believes that non-living matter spontaneously produced life” etc, but if that is not how it happened how do you believe life did come about?

Shadow Minister – what does the fact that intelligent scientists, using sophisticated lab equipment, under precise conditions, were able to make amino acids, have to do with living creatures spontaneously arising from lifeless matter?

You acknowledge sentience has not been able to be created by highly intelligent scientists, but you believe that, somehow, sentience arose purely by chance processes. You express faith that one day scientists will be able to create sentience and also artificial intelligence – and they are faith claims you are making.

You say I am copping out by saying that there is a fundamental difference between intelligent beings working to bring about a very complex end and that same end occurring simply as a consequence of chance, spontaneous events. If a watch can’t arise by chance it is absurd to suggest that the enormously more complex single living cell somehow just arose from lifeless matter. When you say you believe it did, and have no evidence to show how it did, that is a statement of faith.

JP

Your patience is admirable.You have exposed the blind faith of atheism so well. Many atheist like Dawkins deny their own words. I suppose when you are used to changing your story so many times it is not surprising. It is so funny the way they take the 'high' ground trying to convince the gullible that atheism is rational.

"There is no element of indoctrinated belief about atheism."

In my youth I was an evangelical atheist who used to preach to others that any rational person could see that God was a construct.

One day it dawned on me that I was an atheist for much the same reasons that others were catholics. I grew up with atheistic parents - as did my children, and they are all atheists as well.

Was I indoctrinated into atheism? I didn't think so - it was part of my belief system. Does a catholic think he/she has been indoctrinated into Catholicism? I doubt it.

Atheism really is a belief system. I cannot prove god does not exist. I firmly believe it but I cannot prove it.

Would my belief have been different if I had grown up in a catholic household? I'll never know but I would be very cautious about insisting that I had not been influenced by my upbringing or that I wasn't indoctrinated.

Good article, David. One wonders what the overwhelmingly good people in the pews thought over Easter.

runner, evolution is such a well established concept, backed up by the good work of German-Austrian monk Gegor Mendel and his "Mendelian genetics" using peas - published in 1865 & 1866, yet forgotten until rediscovered in 1900 - that he used to create (i) the Law of Segregation and (ii) the Law of Independent Assortment. Subsequently, the discovery of DNA structure, and its function, has opened up a whole new world that continues to verify evolution and its mechanisms; as has population studies in the wild, and knowledge from artificial breeding.

JP, abiogenesis is wonderful frontier for science and humanity; as is cosmogenesis, and elaborating functions of the mind. One of the foremost current reserachers into abiogenesis is one of the 2009 Nobel medicine laureates Jack Szostak. An audio interview is here

http://technorati.com/videos/youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3D3OwSARYTK7w

Nobody these days takes any science "on faith". Speculating and theorising are the first steps in science, yet change as new information and theories becomes available.

JP,

When scientists say “nothing” in this respect, they don’t necessarily mean “nothing” in the same sense that we do, or that you were implying with your continual mentioning of spontaneity. A good video that explains it much better than I could can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxNbXjBbzEo&NR=1.

Then there’s also the hypothesis that the universe (or even multiverse) is an infinite series of expansions and collapses.

<<You also claim that “No one believes that non-living matter spontaneously produced life” etc, but if that is not how it happened how do you believe life did come about?>>

Me personally? I believe I don’t know.

That’s right: I don’t know - three very simple words you fundamentalists seem to have so much difficulty with.

But there are some good theories and scientists get closer and closer everyday to finding the answer to that question. The most credible theory I’ve heard, is that nucleotides (which have been found to form quite easily in montmorillonite clay - a clay that would have been in abundance in Earth’s primordial state) naturally link together to form polynucleotides; polynucleotides naturally link together to form RNA; the RNA then links together to form DNA. Lipids have been found to easily form a shell around DNA, which would have acted as a protective coating for the DNA, and there you have the first primitive cell.

Some of these stages of abiogenesis have been repeated in laboratories too.

The idea spread around by Creationists that scientists believe complex cells - like the ones we know today - just popped into existence, is just one of the many examples of the continual and pathological deceit of Creationists.

So much for the supposed exposé, eh Runner?