Atheists - Doubt Your Doubts

[nl]

"Contrary to popular opinion, then, Christianity is not a Western religion that destroys local cultures. Rather, Christianity has taken more culturally diverse forms than other faiths. It has deep layers of insight from the Hebrew, Greek and European cultures, and over the next hundred years will be further shaped by Africa, Latin America and Asia."

The center and majority of Islam's population is still the place of its origin - the Middle East. Islam is perhaps most well-understood among people who understand the Arabic language.

The original lands in Asia that have been the demographic centers of Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism have remained so.

By contrast, Christianity was first dominated by Jews and centered in Jerusalem. Later, it was dominated by Helenists and centered in lands of the Mediterranean like Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Greece and Egypt.

"Later, the faith was received by the barbarians of Northern Europe and Christianity came to be dominated by western Europeans and then North Americans. Today, most Christians in the world live in Africa, Latin America and Asia."

Africans had a long tradition of belief in a supernatural world of good and evil spirits. Christianity helped Africans be become renewed Africans, not re-made Europeans. In the Bible, Africans read of Jesus's power over supernatural and spiritual evil and of his triumph over it on the cross.

Biblical texts such as Revelation 21-22 depict a renewed, future world with representatives from every tongue, tribe, people and nation. Every human culture has distinct strengths for the enrichment of others.

Quoted or adapted from The Reason for God by Timothy Keller.

Jesus Christ is unique. Christianity is unique.

 

[nl]

1. You claim God is a spirit, but this is simply an explanation - not evidence.

God is a Spirit. Spirit resides in a dimension that science cannot detect.

The philosophical rules of some will not permit acknowledgment of a spiritual dimension with properties that naturalists cannot detect.

The spiritual did once become physical and dwelt among us. His Name was Jesus. We have physical evidence of testimony from his time and place and generation that he was born in Bethlehem, traveled in Israel, Egypt and Lebanon, healed the lame and blind, turned water into wine, walked on water, raised the dead, rose from the dead Himself.

We have newer and more numerous manuscript copies for the Greek New Testament than for well-known writings of well-known Greeks and Romans. See the chart.



Source: McDowell, J. (2006). Evidence for christianity (pp. 65–66). Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers.

 

[Percepi]

God is a Spirit. Spirit resides in a dimension that science cannot detect.

Science is the method of verifying claims. Saying "science can't detect it" is the equivalent to saying, "this claim can't be verified and confirmed".

The philosophical rules of some will not permit acknowledgment of a spiritual dimension with properties that naturalists cannot detect.

If it can't be detected, how can it be confirmed? Referring to it as a philosophy doesn't change the fact that you're assuming something is real without confirmation.

The spiritual did once become physical and dwelt among us. His Name was Jesus. We have physical evidence of testimony from his time and place and generation that he was born in Bethlehem, traveled in Israel, Egypt and Lebanon, healed the lame and blind, turned water into wine, walked on water, raised the dead, rose from the dead Himself.

Kim Jong Il mastered the game of golf the very first time he picked up a golf club. He scored 38 under par, 11 shots being holes in one. We know this is true due to the witness testimony of 17 bodyguards who witnessed the event.

Telling me there were people who witnessed Jesus doesn't convince me at all.

We have newer and more numerous manuscript copies for the Greek New Testament than for well-known writings of well-known Greeks and Romans. See the chart.

Jesus never came up in writing until about 20 years after he supposedly died. Testimony alone is already unreliable, the gap makes it even more unreliable. All of the New Testament is based off of itself - we don't have writings that are completely independent of each other. Each later author was aware of the works of earlier authors.

This is why witness testimony alone is unreliable.

 

[nl]

As scientists learn more and more, the likelihood of life from accidental causation becomes less and less.

For one, DNA is far more complex that originally conceived. As each new level of complexity is discovered, the likelihood of accidental causation becomes less and less.

As scientists learn more and more, the likelihood of life on other planets becomes less and less.

Back in 1966, Carl Sagan (1934-1966) declared that only two criteria were needed to support extra-terrestrial life:

• The right kind of star
  
• A planet the right distance from that star.

There are now 200 known parameters to be met within a critical range and the list can be expected to grow. With each new criteria, the likelihood of life on other planets becomes less and less.


"Doesn’t assuming that an intelligence created these perfect conditions require far less faith than believing that a life-sustaining Earth just happened to beat the inconceivable odds to come into being?"


The Wall Street Journal recently published a helpful article about this.

Link: Eric Metaxas: Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God - WSJ

WSJ content often requires a subscription but you may be able to gain access if you link to it via a web search.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. - John 3:16

God had only one Only Begotten Son to give for the sins of a fallen, sinful race. God gave his only Son, Jesus, for the sins of only the human race.

 

[nl]

Science is the method of verifying claims. Saying "science can't detect it" is the equivalent to saying, "this claim can't be verified and confirmed".

If it can't be detected, how can it be confirmed? Referring to it as a philosophy doesn't change the fact that you're assuming something is real without confirmation.

Naturalism - Naturalism is "the philosophical belief that everything arises from natural properties and causes, and supernatural or spiritual explanations are excluded or discounted." Adherents of naturalism (i.e., naturalists) assert that natural laws are the rules that govern the structure and behavior of the natural universe, that the changing universe at every stage is a product of these laws. - Source: Naturalism (philosophy) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You may not self-identify as a naturalist but your worldview and everyone else's includes assumptions and claims that can't be verified or confirmed. The supernatural and spiritual appear to be realms that you assume are excluded from reality. For examples, black holes, dark matter, and dark energy are cosmological terms that are not fully confirmed.

Kim Jong Il mastered the game of golf the very first time he picked up a golf club. He scored 38 under par, 11 shots being holes in one. We know this is true due to the witness testimony of 17 bodyguards who witnessed the event.

Telling me there were people who witnessed Jesus doesn't convince me at all.

LOL. Sony produced a new movie. 'Tis the season for satire of N. Korean leaders.

Jesus never came up in writing until about 20 years after he supposedly died. Testimony alone is already unreliable, the gap makes it even more unreliable. All of the New Testament is based off of itself - we don't have writings that are completely independent of each other. Each later author was aware of the works of earlier authors.

This is why witness testimony alone is unreliable.

How do you know what each later author of a New Testament book knew about earlier authors?

We have more and better manuscripts to support Jesus and the New Testament that we do for Caesar and Plato and Homer. See post #82 above.

Some may try to pretend that the historical Jesus didn't exist but multiple types of evidence exist to support the historical Jesus.

Detractors like R. Eisenman will differ and even claim to know motives of human hearts from centuries ago.

Judicial systems around the world have used witness testimony for milleniums. Witness testimony is important.

 

[nl]

Back in 1966, Carl Sagan (1934-1966) declared that only two criteria were needed to support extra-terrestrial life:

• The right kind of star
  
• A planet the right distance from that star.

There are now 200 known parameters to be met within a critical range and the list can be expected to grow. With each new criteria, the likelihood of life on other planets becomes less and less.

"Doesn’t assuming that an intelligence created these perfect conditions require far less faith than believing that a life-sustaining Earth just happened to beat the inconceivable odds to come into being?"

Correction: The dates for Dr. Carl Sagan were 1934-1996.

 

[Percepi]

Naturalism - Naturalism is "the philosophical belief that everything arises from natural properties and causes, and supernatural or spiritual explanations are excluded or discounted." Adherents of naturalism (i.e., naturalists) assert that natural laws are the rules that govern the structure and behavior of the natural universe, that the changing universe at every stage is a product of these laws. - Source: Naturalism (philosophy) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You may not self-identify as a naturalist but your worldview and everyone else's includes assumptions and claims that can't be verified or confirmed. The supernatural and spiritual appear to be realms that you assume are excluded from reality. For examples, black holes, dark matter, and dark energy are cosmological terms that are not fully confirmed.

Naturalism is a philosophy that verifies that certain claims can not be verified. This is why naturalism deals with the observable, because it's the most practical way of actually solving problems. It is possible that reality is just a simulation or that we're just brains in jars, but there's no way we could ever know such things. However, seeing as how we have some form of thought built on sensory functions, we can create a system in measuring the world around us as accurately as possible. Everything we think we know could be wrong, it could all be a simulation, but our standards or measuring the world around us actually works.

For example, do we really need water and sun light to grow crops? If everything is a simulation, the answer is "no". Since we can't be sure, what do we do? Well, since watering crops and exposing them to direct sunlight appears to work, we continue to do so since it creates predictable patterns that can be used to benefit us. We can further develop new ways of measuring the world since we know that our senses can be flawed, and provably flawed as well. This is where scientific method comes in.

In the end, it still stands that if you say "science can't detect it", you're saying it can't be verified.

LOL. Sony produced a new movie. 'Tis the season for satire of N. Korean leaders.

My point is that witness testimony alone isn't very reliable.

We have more and better manuscripts to support Jesus and the New Testament that we do for Caesar and Plato and Homer. See post #82 above.

We have documents written by Ceasar, as well as various sources that refer to Caesar in numerous different fashions. Everything we have for Jesus came after Jesus died. Everything written about Jesus was done so in a bibliographical manner.

Your source claimed we only have 10 manuscripts supporting the existence of Caesar. I honestly find this number to be completely absurd. I'm not a historian so I'll have to dig up the numerous sources that prove Caesar's existence, as well as other evidences that confirm these sources.

Some may try to pretend that the historical Jesus didn't exist but multiple types of evidence exist to support the historical Jesus.

The only evidence we have are witness testimonies that were written over 20 years after his supposed death.

Judicial systems around the world have used witness testimony for milleniums. Witness testimony is important.

Witness testimony only works if it coincides with physical evidence. Otherwise, it's completely unreliable and it results in innocent people being punished. We have wonderful examples of witness testimonies that have been proven wrong, but were accepted as fact by large numbers of people. *cough Ferguson couch*

 

[JimmieD]

For one, DNA is far more complex that originally conceived. As each new level of complexity is discovered, the likelihood of accidental causation becomes less and less.

Complexity is not an argument against randomness.

And I think you may be confusing prior probabilities with conditional probabilities. You're interested in the probability of life given some observed data (such as DNA), not just the prior probability of observing the data. You're interested in this question:

L=life
O=Observed data

P(L|O)=P(O|L)P(L)/P(O)

Essentially, I think you need to show that given the observed data, the probability of life is low, then you would need to that a rare observation wasn't due to random chance.

As scientists learn more and more, the likelihood of life on other planets becomes less and less.

Back in 1966, Carl Sagan (1934-1966) declared that only two criteria were needed to support extra-terrestrial life:

• The right kind of star
  
• A planet the right distance from that star.

There are now 200 known parameters to be met within a critical range and the list can be expected to grow. With each new criteria, the likelihood of life on other planets becomes less and less.


"Doesn’t assuming that an intelligence created these perfect conditions require far less faith than believing that a life-sustaining Earth just happened to beat the inconceivable odds to come into being?"

How did you estimate those odds? Calculating probabilities and likelihoods is not always intuitive. In the Milky Way alone there are estimated to be about 9 billion earth-like planets that live in the "goldilocks zone." Sure, if you estimate the odds of an earthlike planet bearing life and found it to be high, then it might be difficult to say that it was a statistical anomaly. And the question you are interested in isn't simply the probability of life, you are interested in the probability of random chanced life vs God created life. If you were to calculate the probability of an earthlike planet bearing life, and you found that the probability was remote, you will still have some sort of statistical error term where the observation of an earthlike planet bearing life would occur by random chance. You are interested in the hypothesis that life on THIS earth (or perhaps life on ANY earthlike planet or even all earthlike planets) was created by God vs the alternative hypothesis that it wasn't. I don't know how one would actually begin to try to demonstrate this; I really doubt it could be done. I think you would have to at least begin with an axiomatic statement that God exists, which usually undermines the initial purpose of the line of inquiry.

One of the major problems related to the above is that an observational piece of data cannot statistically establish causality, probabilities, or likelihoods. My observation of X says nothing about the cause of X, the population, the distribution of observations, the variance of observed data, etc...

Somewhat separately, I don't know that there can be random chance in a theistic worldview. You could never [statistically] demonstrate a God-caused event vs. a random event without a sufficient sample of God caused events in your data from which you could make statistical comparisons - and I doubt anyone has that data without assuming God's existence as axiomatic. Without that data, a God-caused event will appear no different from a random event. Essentially, God would be a statistical error term.

Or, if your observed data indicated that the error term was correlated with the dependent variable, without the data of God-caused events, God-causation would appear as omitted variable bias, which isn't that much different from an atheist saying, "oh, it's God of the gaps."

So I think when talking probabilities and likelihoods, without a prior commitment to belief in God, or sufficient data of God-actions, God-caused explanations would appear no different from random chance or omitted variable bias. For the theist, I think God has to (a) be an axiomatic belief and (b) leave/provide/grant/give sufficient data from which you could make further statistical comparisons.

Bottom line, I doubt statistics is very useful for theistic proofs.

 

[Cycel]

As scientists learn more and more, the likelihood of life from accidental causation becomes less and less.

Nl? Really? This claim of yours doesn't sound like a legitimate scientific response. It sounds like a religious response.

For one, DNA is far more complex that originally conceived. As each new level of complexity is discovered, the likelihood of accidental causation becomes less and less.

In what way is DNA more complex than thought?

As scientists learn more and more, the likelihood of life on other planets becomes less and less.

This is not what scientists think at all, Nl.

Back in 1966, Carl Sagan (1934-1966) declared that only two criteria were needed to support extra-terrestrial life:

• The right kind of star
  
• A planet the right distance from that star.

There are now 200 known parameters to be met within a critical range and the list can be expected to grow. With each new criteria, the likelihood of life on other planets becomes less and less.

Nl, you should know better. Sagan was generalizing. That statement came from Time Magazine and the lead article, "Is God Dead?" However the information you quote following that is from Eric Metaxas who now has a best selling book titled Miracles; but perhaps you already know that? He is warping the information you've presented here. In fact, he is presenting the case just as conservative Christians would like to hear it. Do you own his book? Have you already read it?

 

[Cycel]

Judicial systems around the world have used witness testimony for milleniums. Witness testimony is important.

Eye witness testimony is also known to be very unreliable.

 

[Cycel]

Some may try to pretend that the historical Jesus didn't exist but multiple types of evidence exist to support the historical Jesus.

Detractors like R. Eisenman will differ and even claim to know motives of human hearts from centuries ago.

Judicial systems around the world have used witness testimony for milleniums. Witness testimony is important.

Eisenman started out as a Bible believing Christian – if that means anything to you?

Eisenman, by the way, does believe in the existence of an historical Jesus. I don't know if you knew that. He also says that the best evidence of his existence comes from Paul, who knew James, and who states that James was the Lord's brother. Conservative Christians want to believe there is a great deal more evidence for Jesus, than what there actually is.

Where the real problem lies is not with Jesus, but with the Christ figure. Jesus, I am pretty sure was a messianic believing Jew, who may have come to believe that he was the messiah (note: messiah does not mean son of God). I think I will stop there for now. This topic can very quickly get very complex.

 

[nl]

Eisenman started out as a Bible believing Christian – if that means anything to you?

Christian or Jewish background would both mean something to me.

You may be right but background information on Eisenman that I viewed doesn't indicate that at all. Could you provide more information on that?

Cycel, I'm thinking that you have also made reference to Dr. Bart Ehrman who better aligns with that in his profile detail.

Eisenman's early history does makes mention of Jack Kerouac and extensive world wide travels.

Eisenman's early history reminds me of the early history of Kevin Kelly of Wired.com if you are familiar with any of that. Kevin Kelly did extensive global travels as a youth, notably in Asia. Kevin Kelly's book, New Rules for the New Economy, influenced me significantly over a decade ago.

 

[nl]

As scientists learn more and more, the likelihood of life from accidental causation becomes less and less.

Nl? Really? This claim of yours doesn't sound like a legitimate scientific response. It sounds like a religious response.

This is a logical response. Each new layer of known organized complexity makes a hypothesis of accidental causation to become even less likely. How much improbability does it take before impossibility becomes the logical assessment of the situation?

Life on earth is far more remarkably amazing and unlikely than many acknowledge. As taught by the science of ecology, earth is multiple inter-dependent systems. The inter-dependencies involve hydrologic cycle, ocean currents, air currents, ozone layer, atmospheric and polar magnetism provide protection from solar gamma rays, plate techtonics, bird migrations and more. A highly incomplete list of symbiotic relationships would include:

• Bees and pollen-bearing plants are in a symbiotic dependency
• Plants and animals are in symbiotic relationship involving oxygen and carbon dioxide
• Plants providing food and habitat for animals. Birds helping plants by spreading seeds and small amounts of fertilizer.
• Plants and animals and predator relationships provide a balance to prevent an over-proliferation of a single species.

I'm sure that this list could be much larger.

Those big, blue oceans on earth are a feature found on no other known planet. The oceans support the hydrologic cycle and rain/snow, moderate temperatures to prevent them from going to extremes, provide a cleansing function and much more.

Q. How many planets out there have oceans? A. None that we know.

Earth is a wonderful place.

Intelligent Design provides a better explanation for it than blind randomness and natural selection.

As each new feature of complexity on earth and life is discovered, the likelihood of a planet and life elsewhere that matches the same level of complexity as found around us becomes less likely. That's simple logic.

In what way is DNA more complex than thought?

No amount of swirling or electrified chemicals is going to provide the vast amount of useful organized information stored in DNA and RNA in even a simple single-cell organism. The digital code in a simple cell is vastly more complex than any software running on any computer client or server in the world.

Many software encryption schemes have been cracked and coded messages have been de-coded but the digital code in genomes contains much that is unknown.

Life is a wonderful thing.

Nl, you should know better. Sagan was generalizing. That statement came from Time Magazine and the lead article, "Is God Dead?" However the information you quote following that is from Eric Metaxas who now has a best selling book titled Miracles; but perhaps you already know that? He is warping the information you've presented here. In fact, he is presenting the case just as conservative Christians would like to hear it. Do you own his book? Have you already read it?

Yes, Dr. Carl Sagan (with support from Time Magazine decades ago) was vastly over-simplifying the situation by recognizing only two criteria requirements to support life on other planets. Dr. Sagan should have known better than to say what he said.

Eric Metaxas recently reported in the WSJ that the current count of criteria requirements is over 200. With other variables staying the same, as the count of required criteria grows larger, the number of planets that qualify as candidates for supporting life will necessarily grow smaller. That's math and logic.

WSJ Link: Eric Metaxas: Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God - WSJ

I own one book by Eric Metaxas on Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) that was given to me a few years ago. I have browsed it but not read it.

 

[Cycel]

As scientists learn more and more, the likelihood of life on other planets becomes less and less.

I know Metaxas is claiming this, but he is writing from a nonscientific position. It is similar to claims I've seen that scientists are about to discard evolution. Both claims are nonsense. Whether or not life is common or rare in the universe is irrelevant. Many currently believe planets that can support life are most likely quite common. See the current issue of Scientific American for its cover story: Planets More Habitable Than Earth May Be Common in Our Galaxy. Science is not increasingly rejecting this idea, they are increasingly accepting that life may be common in the universe.

 

[Cycel]

As scientists learn more and more, the likelihood of life on other planets becomes less and less.

The simple truth is that this statement is untrue. Is Metaxas's statement an outright lie? I don't know. If it is not a lie then it was most likely made out of ignorance. The truth is this, in 1960 when this Time magazine article with Sagan's quote came out, fewer scientists then believed life was common in the universe. That is my impression from having become deeply involved in amateur astronomy in the decades that followed. First there was no evidence, as yet, that planets were common. The only example anyone had was the abundance of planets in our own solar system. If planets are common here then perhaps they are common everywhere. This is likely the reasoning Sagan himself was using. The first definitive discovery of a planet around a star similar to the Sun came only one year before Sagan's death in 1996. As of 2014 the number of confirmed exoplanets now stands at over 1,800. That planets are common beyond our Sun is no longer in doubt. Most scientists would now say, in fact, that planets are ubiquitous – they are everywhere. Given this current knowledge far more astronomers are now willing to speculate that life too may be common.

Also, the fairly recent discovery of abundant extremophile bacteria on Earth further lends credibility to the possibility that life might exist on worlds not conducive to human-type life. The recent discovery of a presumed 100 km deep ocean of salt water beneath the icy surface of Europa has led to speculation that life might exist there. On Mars, plumes of methane gas have recently been seen escaping from the surface and lead researchers to speculate that bacteria might be producing them. I would say that in recent years the number of scientists speculating about the possible abundance of life in the universe has gone up, not down. I don't believe that Metaxas has any reason to make his ulterior claim.

 

[Cycel]

Nl? Really? This claim of yours doesn't sound like a legitimate scientific response. It sounds like a religious response.

This is a logical response. Each new layer of known organized complexity makes a hypothesis of accidental causation to become even less likely.

You are arguing, “Life is complex and therefore God must exist to have created it.” Nl, everyone knows life is complex. Darwin knew it as well, yet all the evidence at his disposal pointed to his hypothesis being true. This is why scientists, en-mass, adopted his reasoning in the immediate aftermath of his book's release. Only conservative Christians (and other deeply conservative religious folk like Muslims) are rejecting evolution. The complexity of life is the hallmark of evolutionary theory. Evolutionary processes made life complex. We don't yet know what the first life forms that began it all looked like.

You are right. A complex life form can’t just pop into existence, but no one is claiming this – well, except for creationists pushing the view that a Bronze Age account is the most accurate description of how life began. In truth we are not looking for an amoeba-like progenitor of all life. Researchers are looking for a rather simple looking self-replicating biochemical molecule that existed before all those layers of complexity were added.

Essentially you keep arguing that a Boeing 747 can’t just pop into existence. We all know that Nl. That is not the type of beginning that is being imagined by science, so all those arguments about complexity are something of a red herring.

 

[Cycel]

Those big, blue oceans on earth are a feature found on no other known planet. The oceans support the hydrologic cycle and rain/snow, moderate temperatures to prevent them from going to extremes, provide a cleansing function and much more.

Q. How many planets out there have oceans? A. None that we know.

I don't know whether you are aware that Europa, a moon of Jupiter, is thought to have a liquid, salt water ocean beneath its frozen ice water surface? That Mars once had substantial amounts of water on its surface for at least millions of years is now well established. There is also growing speculation that Venus too once had a more earth-like, water rich, environment. Then there is the recent discovery of substantial quantities of water ice on our moon.

Not too many months ago you pointed out the discovery of an abundance of water in deep space. Water is everywhere we look in space, Nl, you know that, so why would there not be an abundance of planets with liquid oceans beyond our solar system?

 

[Human]

This is a logical response. Each new layer of known organized complexity makes a hypothesis of accidental causation to become even less likely. How much improbability does it take before impossibility becomes the logical assessment of the situation?

Biochemistry isn't chance or randomness in the same way you think of it. Complex molecules exist all over the universe, and interact in complex ways. At a bsic level, everything is energy, and transferred energy is what makes the universe tick. Without the movement of electrons nothing works. That's the simple explanation. But those electrons can and do interact with other protons and nuclei in very complex electromagnetic processes that can create an innumerable variation of circumstances. Calculated odds are inherently meaningless for this reason. Protiens can take an unnumerable number of specific forms, thus calculating odds that they should form is practically impossible; there are so many available ways for proteins to do so.

Life on earth is far more remarkably amazing and unlikely than many acknowledge.

It is incredibly complex, but absolutely not impossible to come into existence via the innumerable variations in exchange of electrons. That's exaclty what life (and all matter) is; a group of electrons, protons and nuclei, or more simply, various energies constantly changing in form in an incalculable number of different ways, as it does.

As taught by the science of ecology, earth is multiple inter-dependent systems. The inter-dependencies involve hydrologic cycle, ocean currents, air currents, ozone layer, atmospheric and polar magnetism provide protection from solar gamma rays, plate techtonics, bird migrations and more. A highly incomplete list of symbiotic relationships would include:

• Bees and pollen-bearing plants are in a symbiotic dependency
• Plants and animals are in symbiotic relationship involving oxygen and carbon dioxide
• Plants providing food and habitat for animals. Birds helping plants by spreading seeds and small amounts of fertilizer.
• Plants and animals and predator relationships provide a balance to prevent an over-proliferation of a single species.

I'm sure that this list could be much larger.

Those big, blue oceans on earth are a feature found on no other known planet.

Oceans are found in lots of places. Europa is one example in our own solar system.

The oceans support the hydrologic cycle and rain/snow, moderate temperatures to prevent them from going to extremes, provide a cleansing function and much more.

Temperature regulation as on Earth has a lot more to do with Earth's rotation and the stability the moon provides as well as distance from the sun, but I see what you're saying.

Q. How many planets out there have oceans? A. None that we know.

Europa has oceans. It's not a planet, but it doesn't make a difference. It's a huge celestial body with water oceans.

Earth is a wonderful place.

Intelligent Design provides a better explanation for it than blind randomness and natural selection.

I disagree.

As each new feature of complexity on earth and life is discovered, the likelihood of a planet and life elsewhere that matches the same level of complexity as found around us becomes less likely. That's simple logic.

No, it's an assumption. There's no reason life as we know it has to be the only type of life that can exist. Complexity of life has little bearing on the possibility of its inception as I explained earlier in my reply.

No amount of swirling or electrified chemicals is going to provide the vast amount of useful organized information stored in DNA and RNA in even a simple single-cell organism.

Really? Because the exchange of electrons (swirling electrified chemicals, as you put it) IS what makes up the vast amount of 'information' in all of us, and in every other living and non living thing in the universe.

The digital code in a simple cell is vastly more complex than any software running on any computer client or server in the world.

Digital?? You mean genetic? Biological? What? If you're talking about genetic code (aka DNA), it really isn't. It's four specific chemcials repeated over and over in various patterns of two (or three for proteins). It's not that complex.

Many software encryption schemes have been cracked and coded messages have been de-coded but the digital code in genomes contains much that is unknown.

The genome has been sequenced, in scores of species. Again, it's four chemicals repeated in patterns.

Life is a wonderful thing.

Agreed.

Yes, Dr. Carl Sagan (with support from Time Magazine decades ago) was vastly over-simplifying the situation by recognizing only two criteria requirements to support life on other planets. Dr. Sagan should have known better than to say what he said.

Eric Metaxas recently reported in the WSJ that the current count of criteria requirements is over 200. With other variables staying the same, as the count of required criteria grows larger, the number of planets that qualify as candidates for supporting life will necessarily grow smaller. That's math and logic.

No, it's not, it's erroneous and false. The number of potential planets for life (those within the Goldilocks Zone) is much larger than i nthe sixties. And we don't know if the variables must stay the same. That's one reason we are trying to get to other planets!

 

[Human]

I'll be honest with you NL, you seem to have a lot more genuine interest in science, alongside a willingness to try to understand evolutionary theory (even if only to endeavour to make coherent arguments against it) so I think, honestly, you should bookmark this page and have a look through it. It is a comprehensive list of known creationist arguments against lots of scientific theories, with short stubs refuting the arguments, stubs which are referenced and linked to vast resources and scientific journals that expand on the answers given.

Please bookmark it.

An Index to Creationist Claims

 

[Human]

As well as that, watch Professor Brian Cox's ''Wonders of Life''. It provides various facts and expanations that are great to open the door. Some parts might require a re-watch but it's good.