Not our responsibility. The onus is on those who believe in divine intervention to prove their assertions.

The lack of evidence of such is sufficient enough to reasonably conclude a positive as false. If someone came up to me and said that NASDAQ was going to sink tomorrow, for example, without any evidence (and in fact, all reason tells you that NASDAQ is doing superb), it isn't a reasonable position to decide to sell until someone comes along and disproves such an ungrounded prediction. Our legal system is modeled after the same exact philosophy: innocent until proven guilty.

Beats me. I wasn't there, but neither were you. Presumably it had to do with how the child landed.

Your example of a miracle is an exercise in ad hoc fallacy. It's interesting that unlikely events which have good consequences are attributable to god, but the countless unlikely events of pure evil seem to allude God's 'ultimate power' .

Why are we to assume, for example, that the survival of this child is God's miraculous work but when a child dies from a fall it is not?

I like how you're kicking and screaming with this. You would say anything to keep from saying this was a miracle wouldn't you? Ha, I mean "It Presumably had to do with the way the baby landed" Thats a great bullshit statement I gotta tell ya. It doesn't matter if the baby landed on its feet and did a bow at the end, the baby wasn't injured at all. Wouldn't someone at least have minor injuries? Why can't you just realize that things go unexplained in this world. Things that we have no control over. I don't know if you are aware of this or not but some things in your life are uncontrollable. If they haven't happend yet then they will sooner or later. I know it shocks you that you can't explain or direct every little thing in your life but thats how it is. We are all guided along by some force we can't put our finger on. Its called guardian angels. We all have them. I believe that baby who fell 30 feet had one looking out for her and thats why she was able to escape without injury.

As for as evil things alluding god's power. Its because there is evil in the world man. Everbody knows that you can't have good in the world without some type of evil trying to overturn it. I mean don't tell me Atheists don't believe in evil as well as not believing in god. If thats the case then you folks are not only close minded and anal retentive, but your also really ignorant. Hope that's not the case my friend.

Ya know. Atheism is not real credible. I mean it's like Ben Stein said in regards to those who are die hard believers in Evolution. He says that If you ask them how life began they either give you an empty answer or they can't give you an answer at all. He also says that if they are so right about Darwinism then why are they so bent on proving their points? I mean your correct anyway right? So whats left to prove? He was saying that he believes they must be threatened by something or afraid of something that goes against their theory.

Think about this. He said that a child could disprove their theories.

I find a few things odd about science and the whole world of Atheism.

One, I find that non-believers can be hypcrites when they say that religion damages people. Or when they say its wrong and not needed in the world.

Some religious leaders are setting bad examples yes, but you never hear about the Scientists who steal stem cells for cloning experiments or how scientists are notorious for using animals for testing. Why is it that we never hear about that? I mean aren't you playing god if you try all these cloning experiments? I mean science is so great that they are now coming up with robots that would be able to give men sexual pleasure. How vital to our civilization. Sex robots.

And two, I find it odd that Atheists accuse Christianity of being shoved down peoples' throats.

Sometimes that is true but what about the incident in Utah? Why did those AA members have to hassle that innocent family? I mean they brought those crosses with their own money right? The crosses weren't blank so they were considered secular symbols. So why get bent out of shape over a situation that didn't concern them in the first place? Wouldn't that be considered intruding into someone's life? I think so.

Science can be good and bad. Just like Religion. So Stop thinking all religion is bad. You have no basis for that assumption. Just as you claim Christians have no basis on their belief that god exists.

I think this senseless debate of non belief vs. belief is really pointless. No matter what you say people will have faith in a god and find comfort and peace in him. Same goes with non-believers, more likely than not they will continue to think otherwise.

We aren't getting anywhere with these debates in this country. I mean a bunch of "know it all" Atheists want to prove themselves to be the intelligent group and Christians want to rub it in a non-believers face. Thats all this thing is really about.

I choose to not debate this anymore. I know what I believe. I know that Jesus died for me and rose again. I know that I love all walks of life who believe in all things. Even those who believe opposite of me. That love and respect for people isn't because I'm a Christian, it's because I'm human. We all contain this natural love and understanding of each other to some degree. We need to show it instead of trying to "one up" each other. All that creates is division.

Actually, I think the story insinuated that the baby had some minor injuries, it's just that the baby avoided major injuries. But anyway, it's a high probability that the child would have suffered some major injuries, but that doesn't leave out the possibility of not.

Funny, I was going to say the same thing to you. I'm not the one trying to explain this at all, it is you who is attributing divine intervention.

In principle we can explain everything, but I wont deny that the data is limited so far.

By attributing magical angels to this event, you would be creating unnecessary entities (violating Occam's razor). It would be equivalent to, say, a caveman to whom the operations of a watch are completely mysterious, suddenly coming across a watch, and attempting to explain how it moves by little invisible 'gremlins' inside the watch. Of course, someone might come along and say that the watch's operations can be perfectly explainable by it's mechanics inside, but the cavemen call him a fool simply because at the moment it is 'mysterious'.

Humans have been foolishly attributing intention and the supernatural to the unexplainable or unlikely since their beginnings.

On the premise that God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good, then why would he permit the existence of unspeakable evils? Why would god intervene on the random account of this baby but allow children to suffer and die en masse in the plague, the holocaust, or starvation and AIDS in Africa? It is very inconsistent to suggest that God saved this good little white baby but when people see images on their television of AIDS, starvation, and war creating unspeakable suffering and death among children in Africa...oh, well that's just 'unfortunate'.

To suggest that God doesn't intervene in order to make good good (to be contrasted with evil) is one thing, but to suggest that God does intervene and he is undoubtedly inconsistent and devilishly ignorant of the greatest sufferings is another.

Depends on what you mean by evil. I heard of a case where two parents just decided it would be entertaining to put their child in the oven until the child died, is that evil in my opinion? Of course it is. It is evil because it brings suffering (and murder) to another human being, not because of some transcendental and teleological end of the universe dictates it so, but because of the inherent evil of the act itself.

Actually they wouldn't have to because evolution theory doesn't attempt to explain that. It only explains the origin of species.

And anyway, scientists have already been able to demonstrate the formation of monomers of life in the conditions of early Earth.

I thought this video was pretty entertaining:

The reason why biologists must reiterate why evolution is correct is because there are apparently people out there that deny the evidence and need such explanations.

I'm interested in meeting a child who is able to disprove a highly accepted scientific theory. Actually I'm interested in anyone who can do that.

Alternatively, a child can point out the logical absurdities of the god-concept.

That is the worst you can dig up on the evils of science? As opposed to what? Whole peoples being slaughtered in the name of God? I'd rather have someone use stem cells to cure various killer diseases or someone to be given pleasure by a robot than for a village of men and children killed and the virgins taken as sex slaves in the name of whatever God or 'divine cause'.

And anyway, "scientists are notorious for using animals as testing"? Of course animals are used for testing all the time, but is that unethical? I'm sure you're "notorious" for eating animals. The scientific community follows strict ethical guidelines in their research; scientists who break those guidelines are very hard to come by, because even if they were able to prove something in the process of their unethical treatment of test subjects, the scientific community wouldn't take them seriously and said scientist would probably land in jail.

Well it is a stated goal of evangelism to actively attempt to convert. But I don't necessarily complain about attempted conversions, I complain about discrimination against atheists.

Why did Christians have to hassle this innocent familiy?


Or this one?


And I think you're missing the point on the Utah case. The point isn't who purchased the crosses, the point is that they're on public state property. If they had put the crosses on private property no one would have a problem about it. Anal retentive? Perhaps. But usually the law is.

Science can be used in a bad way, but it's not bad in an of itself because it has no particular biases or dogma (minus the useful and empirical scientific method), unlike religion. I think religion is inherently bad because of the stifling of critical thinking, and because of inherently bad dogmas (death to infidels, etc.).

Perhaps, but why is this topic off limits yet people have no problem in ripping each other apart when it comes to political convictions? I personally see no reason why we can't have a dialogue on religion and philosophy. In fact I think we should have dialogues in an effort to root out intolerance and misunderstandings. If you don't communicate, people will ultimately become isolated and fight with other groups.

Maybe to some people. But being kind of Socratic myself, I think it's necessary to hold discussions in order to reach the truth.

Suit yourself.

I highly agree. That's a pretty humanist perspective and I don't need to believe in the supernatural to come to the same conclusions.

That first vid you posted there is insane. They talk about the start of life like they witness it everyday. If the start of life is so damn simple, why havent they ever even come close to making it happen? No pre mortal goo can creat DNA, or RNA. Its litteraly a fairy tail.

If you watched the whole thing then you would know they addressed that very tired argument.

Actually, they have made it happen. Simulating early Earth environment, the necessary building blocks for RNA and DNA (nucleotides) were formed (the video actually references to the experiment).

The only fairy tale here is that God created Earth a few thousand years ago and Adam and Eve were playing with the dinosaurs.

No need, its a crock. There is no way in hell that the first living thing on this planet wasnt created by something. And what ever that something was has to be eternal. Tired argument?? Man you really are brain washed.
They created life fully equipt with DNA? Go sell that crap to some dumb college student, cause I know damn well better.
Maybe that is a fairy tail, but yours is no better, not by a long shot.