This is an answer to an objection to my saying we know nothing about the origin of life because we have no evidence of what it was like in a piece posted here last February. The enduring and vital importance of a largely debunked claim that a 60 year old experiment is relevant to the real and only origin of life on Earth to atheism is, if anything, a sign of its shakiness as an intellectual enterprise. The entire "science" of abiogenesis was begun by Oparin as a scientific demonstration of atheist faith, Miller and Urey and many of the others involved in the effort share that goal. Only, as I point out, unless they are going to disclaim any right to their efforts being the product of intelligence, they might have done the opposite. That is probably the product of their discounting the intelligence of religious folks. Arrogance is a form of stupidity, pride frequently leads to a fall for just that reason. Only that's not a product of scientific research but an observation of the more basic intellectual resource of human experience, just as science is. I'll bet you just hate that fact but a fact it is.
I was just pointing out the fact that no one has the necessary evidence to know anything about an actual event in biology because no one has the evidence of what it was like. That’s not such a startling statement, it happens to be 100% accurate and known, though not admitted to nearly as often as it’s pretended to not be the case. When I had my last long argument about it there were neo-atheists who denied that we were all descended from a common ancestor whereas I was speaking from the assumption of conventional Darwinism that we are all descended from a common ancestor. That’s the idea that makes most sense to me.
The problem with Miller-Urey, and you’d know it if you had read anything much about the problem, is that they didn't show how amino acids formed on the pre-life Earth, they showed how they made them in a laboratory out of c. 60 year old assumptions they made about what the conditions were like, on little to no evidence. AND THEY HARDLY RECREATED EVEN THOSE CONDITIONS IN THEIR LAB. It was totally artificial. My point is that if you are going to claim that, or any other lab experiment, as being relevant IN A BRAWL WITH ID PROPONENTS, that you are handing them the point that it was done through intelligent designs, designs of beings of far less intelligence and ability than the Designer, they are asserting did it under far more difficult conditions. You’re handing them the ability to point that out entirely unnecessarily because you can’t address anything about the actual Origin of Life.
The honest study of evolution is not dependent on anything but actual evidence that evolution and the ravages of time have left us. That evidence is overwhelming that species evolved over billions of years. I call that a hard fact. How it happened is less clear but it is absolutely clear that happened BECAUSE OF THE EVIDENCE.
However, materialists, having as much of an emotional need to destroy their doubts that there was no God involved, have been trying to do science surrounding the question of the actual Origin of Life for which there is no evidence available. Evidence free “science” didn't start with the Discovery Institute, it’s been part of that very atheistic effort all along.
You know, there was a time I was surprised that I’d have to insist on the actual evidence in these arguments with atheists. But my experience of the past five years have made me see how their talk about being 1010% evidence based is hogwash. They’re as willing to suspend the necessity of evidence as any creationist. And a lot of them have advanced degrees in science and work at distinguished research universities.
The new atheists are lying when they claim to be evidence based. They don’t care about science at all, they don't care about the historical record either, as my posts of the last few days show. They don’t care about intellectual integrity. It’s a fundamentalist faith in materialism motivated by a deep desire to feel superior to other people, a hatred of them and their religious beliefs and, I've come to conclude, a real and deeply felt theophobia. Their abuse of science is based in their emotional need to have their preferences serviced by science, which they mistake as some kind of magical oracle instead of what it is, a sometimes quite effective and often fallible human construct as dependent on human abilities and as liable to human failings as any other human institution. Including religion. When it’s pointed out that science can’t do what they want it to, they’re as ready to try to distort it or to throw it aside as any creationist is. You’re just the mirror of the ID industry, you have no more integrity than they do.
THEOPHOBIA, a fear of God or gods or of things to do with God is an explanation of the febrile content of popular atheism. I think it is a neurotic condition that needs to be investigated a bit more than it is. There's a reason your heros, PZ, Coyne, Dawkins, Hitchens could use the emotions of you guys to get the biggest audiences in atheism as those with less in common with Glenn Beck, Michael Savage and Andrew Breitbart languish in obscurity. Hate sells, so does fear. Popular atheism is the same thing just using a different vocabulary.
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