# Best Responses to New Atheists **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 1, 2010, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682 "2010-10-01T02:09:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 19
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2010, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682/361 "2010-10-06T14:22:02Z")
> [@KellyCriterion](#): > > > [@SenorBeef](#): > > > > By your criteria, what do we know not to be designed? > > Taking some random machine parts and a pile of glue, throw them all in to a container and shake it up. > > The resulting product, we know, was not designed. You just described a designed process and then declared it wasn’t designed. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2010, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682/362 "2010-10-06T14:24:04Z")
> [@KellyCriterion](#): > > > [@SenorBeef](#): > > > > Oh come on. By your standards, we know nothing is not designed. You said life doesn’t count because even though there is a completely well understood natural mechanism for life to evolve, and it requires no design or supernatural elements whatsoever, you say you can’t prove god didn’t secretly design it that way without evidence even though involving god is completely unnecesary. > > > > So you just said that nothing can be proven not to have been designed, and now you’re demanding to know what we think isn’t designed. > > > > This is just juevenile. > > Or it’s perfectly logical. > > We don’t know if it’s possible for non-living matter to spontaneously form itself in to life. **We do not know**. You are misinformed in two ways about this. The first is in your mistaken belief that anyone who knows what they’re talking about believes the origin of life was “spontaneous.” They don’t. That’s a creationist strawman. Life arose very slowly and incrementally with a number of intermediate steps between Life" and “nonilife.” Th second way you are misinformed is in apparently being completely unaware of the research that had been done in this area and your lack of knowldege that every bit of this process can and has been confirmed as physically plausible. As long as we can show that non-magical explanations are possible at all, then magic can be discarded. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2010, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682/363 "2010-10-06T14:26:44Z")
> [@KellyCriterion](#): > > > [@SenorBeef](#): > > > > By your criteria, what do we know not to be designed? > > Taking some random machine parts and a pile of glue, throw them all in to a container and shake it up. > > The resulting product, we know, was not designed. Ha. Yes it was. Are you sure you know what “designed” means? ---
**Author:** ![Latro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@Latro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Latro)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2010, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682/364 "2010-10-06T14:28:38Z")
Hmm examples of undesigned stuff; blue skies, clouds, water, warmth, lightning, aminoacids… ---
**Author:** ![Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8edcca/32.png) [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superfluous_Parentheses)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2010, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682/365 "2010-10-06T14:31:40Z")
> [@Latro](#): > > Hmm examples of undesigned stuff; blue skies, clouds, water, warmth, lightning, aminoacids… Yes, but not according to **KellyCriterion** ’s criteria. ---
**Author:** ![CurtC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ce73a5/32.png) [@CurtC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CurtC)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2010, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682/366 "2010-10-06T14:46:21Z")
> [@KellyCriterion](#): > > I sure do - but we don’t know whether DNA replication with a small chance of a beneficial mutation is a designed process. We don’t even know if life can arise spontaneously from non-living matter. Hence, you can not say that we know flowers and animals weren’t “designed”. Boy, those gaps where you keep your god-belief are sure getting small these days! > [@KellyCriterion](#): > > We don’t know if it’s possible for non-living matter to spontaneously form itself in to life. **We do not know**. > > Hence, to say “we know organisms weren’t designed” is demonstrably baseless. But even if we grant the proposition that DNA was intelligently designed, the octopus eye is not designed, just because it was formed of parts that _were_ designed. Just like your example of the box of machine parts shaken with glue, yielding something that’s not designed. > [@KellyCriterion](#): > > > [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > > > Yes it does. > > No it doesn’t! An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition! Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2010, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682/367 "2010-10-06T15:11:25Z")
**KellyCriterion** , could you please define “elegant” for us? ---
**Author:** ![Latro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@Latro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Latro)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2010, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682/368 "2010-10-06T15:23:06Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > **KellyCriterion** , could you please define “elegant” for us? Bunny rabbits! OK **Kelly** So there’s this designer that has been putting molecule to molecule, atom to atom over the entire universe for every minute. Just so that after about millions upon millions of years, a tiny speck floating through all of this chaff of creation, would eventually be populated with cute wittle wabbits? Is that your belief? What? you thought it was all about you? ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2010, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682/369 "2010-10-06T15:35:01Z")
> [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](#): > > > [@SenorBeef](#): > > > > If God is capable of such infinite subtlety and magic that he’s changing the nature of life in such a way that even though it’s completely explainable by natural processes, it’s not - it may be god’s design - then certainly god can be there right in that bucket, deciding how things get mixed up. > > Great. Now I want a God-in-a-bucket! 😃 Original or Extra Crispy? ---
**Author:** ![Baboonanza](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f475e1/32.png) [@Baboonanza](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baboonanza)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2010, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682/370 "2010-10-06T15:43:12Z")
> [@CurtC](#): > > An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition! Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes. No it isn’t! ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2010, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682/371 "2010-10-06T15:44:56Z")
Is too! ---
**Author:** ![shy\_guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a6a055/32.png) [@shy\_guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shy_guy)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2010, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682/372 "2010-10-06T16:13:07Z")
All this talking about “elegance” is totally nonsensical anyway. As **Dio** said, it has no scientific meaning. What’s more, all we know is that the things **KellyCriterion** mentions are elegant to _us_ (and probably not even all of us). Small wonder that an indigenous species to the planet would find its surroundings “elegant.” We don’t know whether the same would be true for a hypothetical god-being, and we don’t even know whether the same is true among animals on the planet Earth. Maybe dolphins have a conception of “elegance” that differs from ours, for instance. A highly intelligent species from another planet might look at the Grand Canyon or the human circulatory system and marvel at how inelegant and clunky they are. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2010, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682/373 "2010-10-06T16:19:41Z")
> [@KellyCriterion](#): > > I sure do - but we don’t know whether DNA replication with a small chance of a beneficial mutation is a designed process. We don’t even know if life can arise spontaneously from non-living matter. Hence, you can not say that we know flowers and animals weren’t “designed”. That’s absurd. Any type of replication when there is noise around (in the electronics sense) or variation in conditions will be imperfect. If you see perfect replication, then you can infer design, not imperfect replication. I make my living thanks the the fact that the replication of ICs cause lots of defects. No one designed that fact in, I assure you. As for life and non-life, what do you call a virus? Are you aware that viruses have been built from DNA? BTW, you call yourself a deist, but you seem to assume a god who interferes in the universe, which is not what deism is about. I’ve never known a creationist deist. It seems to me that you believe in some sort of god which you keep vague so you don’t get pinned down about its characteristics. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2010, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682/374 "2010-10-06T16:22:28Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > And yet I can tell the difference between elegant and inelegant about as easily as I can tell difference between a dog and a fish. > > Cite? See, elegance is defined by what Kelly considers elegance. A more scientific person might want to test Kelly’s definition against others, but not Kelly. I can define a dog as a fish by the same criteria. ---
**Author:** ![SteveG1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bb73d2/32.png) [@SteveG1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SteveG1)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2010, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682/375 "2010-10-06T16:24:10Z")
> [@KellyCriterion](#): > > > [@Latro](#): > > > > Your argument kind of hinges on this, I think. > > What high degree of elegance and functionality are you thinking of exactly when you think of the universe? > > > > And you don’t see elegance and functionality in animals or flowers f.i.? > > We know they weren’t designed. > > I sure do - but we don’t know whether DNA replication with a small chance of a beneficial mutation is a designed process. We don’t even know if life can arise spontaneously from non-living matter. Hence, you can not say that we know flowers and animals weren’t “designed”. Yes we can. No problem. The RIGHT answer might be “hell if I know”. At least it’s honest. I don’t go for the “god of the gaps”. It’s lazy and sloppy. “A wizard did it” is just a vaild. I don’t go for "schroedinger’s god (he only “manifests” when nobody looks for evidence). Ignorance of a cause or process does not prove anything about a Creator at all. Ignorance only “proves” we don’t know something. I can very easily say animals and plants were not “intelligently designed”. I don’t have to say they were, or they could have been. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2010, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682/376 "2010-10-06T18:04:32Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > BTW, you call yourself a deist, but you seem to assume a god who interferes in the universe, which is not what deism is about. I’ve never known a creationist deist. It seems to me that you believe in some sort of god which you keep vague so you don’t get pinned down about its characteristics. I propose a new term for those that describe their religion in this manner-“Vaguenostic.” ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2010, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682/377 "2010-10-06T19:31:48Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > > [@Voyager](#): > > > > BTW, you call yourself a deist, but you seem to assume a god who interferes in the universe, which is not what deism is about. I’ve never known a creationist deist. It seems to me that you believe in some sort of god which you keep vague so you don’t get pinned down about its characteristics. > > I propose a new term for those that describe their religion in this manner-“Vaguenostic.” Nah… a deist who is vague is a “maybeist”. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2010, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682/378 "2010-10-06T20:53:07Z")
> [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](#): > > I’m going to take out this old chestnut: why don’t people get “miraculously healed” from something that is literally uncureable? Like loss of a leg? Why are all the cases I hear of either internal problems with little outward evidence or simply diseases that could easily have healed on their own, or even better: miraculously involved a lot of miraculous medical attention? That’s exactly what I used to think before I actually read about genuine cases of miraculous healings and the evidence surrounding them in books such as [Remarkable Recovery](http://www.amazon.com/Remarkable-Recovery-Extraordinary-Healings-Getting/dp/0788161741/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1286397460&sr=1-1), by Dr. Caryle Hirshberg and Dr. Marc Ian Barasch, [The Miracle Detective](http://www.amazon.com/Miracle-Detective-Randall-Sullivan/dp/0802141951/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1286397917&sr=1-1), by Randy Sullivan, and [Lourdes: A Modern Pilgrimage](http://www.amazon.com/Lourdes-Modern-Pilgrimage-Panther-book/dp/B000ZNHH26/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1286398052&sr=1-4), by Patrick Marnham. From those books and others, I learned about many cases of miraculous healings that didn’t match up with the sort of thing you described. Is there anybody who’s actually done a thorough investigation of the topic and found that all claimed miraculous healings are actually cases that could be mistaken for natural recovery? If so, I’d be happy to read a book or article that makes the case, but when I’ve asked this before no such book or article has been named. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2010, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682/379 "2010-10-06T21:03:05Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > > [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](#): > > > > I’m going to take out this old chestnut: why don’t people get “miraculously healed” from something that is literally uncureable? Like loss of a leg? Why are all the cases I hear of either internal problems with little outward evidence or simply diseases that could easily have healed on their own, or even better: miraculously involved a lot of miraculous medical attention? > > That’s exactly what I used to think before I actually read about genuine cases of miraculous healings and the evidence surrounding them in books such as [Remarkable Recovery](http://www.amazon.com/Remarkable-Recovery-Extraordinary-Healings-Getting/dp/0788161741/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1286397460&sr=1-1), by Dr. Caryle Hirshberg and Dr. Marc Ian Barasch, [The Miracle Detective](http://www.amazon.com/Miracle-Detective-Randall-Sullivan/dp/0802141951/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1286397917&sr=1-1), by Randy Sullivan, and [Lourdes: A Modern Pilgrimage](http://www.amazon.com/Lourdes-Modern-Pilgrimage-Panther-book/dp/B000ZNHH26/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1286398052&sr=1-4), by Patrick Marnham. From those books and others, I learned about many cases of miraculous healings that didn’t match up with the sort of thing you described. Is there anybody who’s actually done a thorough investigation of the topic and found that all claimed miraculous healings are actually cases that could be mistaken for natural recovery? If so, I’d be happy to read a book or article that makes the case, but when I’ve asked this before no such book or article has been named. Post #305. Again. ---
**Author:** ![CurtC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ce73a5/32.png) [@CurtC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CurtC)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2010, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682/380 "2010-10-06T21:08:16Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Is there anybody who’s actually done a thorough investigation of the topic and found that all claimed miraculous healings are actually cases that could be mistaken for natural recovery? This is called “shifting the burden of proof.” To reiterate Czarcasm’s point, can you relate here, what you would consider to be the strongest case from those books which could not be explained by natural recovery? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682.md?page=18) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-responses-to-new-atheists/555682.md?page=20)