I have been in an ongoing discussion with husband's fundamental cousin and her husband since this summer.  Their latest post is so full of bs I am currently just sitting with my jaw open because they are so illogical.  Perhaps I should just take the high ground and give up the discussion, but I keep remembering the guy that Sapient continued debating who finally "deconverted."  So any help is appreciated.  I will try to edit the post to make it understandable since it has been ongoing.  I will put my comments in parentheses and theirs with bullets.  I know I will have a lot of help from everyone here.  FreeThinkingWill always seems to have excellent arguments put forth in a non-argumentative way.  Thanks to all!  Peg

("When we have reasons for what we believe, we have no need of faith; when we have no reasons, or bad ones, we have lost our connection to the world and to one another."  -author Sam Harris)

>>I guess it sounds good if you want to forego logic, but Mr. Harris should be reminded that naturalism/materialism is a religion that requires faith as well. Reason alone is non-sense because reason pre-supposes faith. Defense of reason by reason is circular, therefore worthless. His own arguement makes the same mistake he insists theists make and thus his statement self-destructs. [WTF?]

>>When you study the information that we have concerning our existence it is clear that the odds of the existence of this world are beyond astronomical (no pun intended) and in fact would be deemed a miracle...... and that naturalism of course cannot provide any answer. ( I do not arrive to the conclusion that that which is highly improbable must therefore be a miracle.  Where is the evidence for this?   This is a false premise.  Any argument which rests on a false premise is invalid.   Beyond astronomical odds are still within the realm of natural possibility and therefore require no supernatural supposition.   If one shuffles and reshuffles a deck of cards the chance of one particular sequence being dealt is miniscule.  (1in10 to the 68th power).  This is a highly unlikely event, yet we know that some sequence will be dealt and that event is not highly unlikely.  That earth developed in exactly the way it did and we exist exactly as we are now may be highly improbable.  But that life developed somewhere within the 50 billion visible galaxies may not be highly improbable.  Conservative estimates of number of existing galaxies currently are 100 billion galaxies each with an estimated 100 billion stars.   This equals 10 thousand, billion, billion stars, or 10 sextillion.  Even if only one in one million stars has a planetary system capable of sustaining life this still equates to 10 billion. &nbsp [I would have bet a million dollars at this point they would bring in an argument about  "the card having a designer"  and what do you know, that is exactly what happened.] >>The simple fact that science states before time, matter and space exploded into being there was nothing. It doesn't take a great deal of logic to conclude that those properties coming from nothing and coming together in a life sustaining manner is in fact a miracle. We can debate the meaning of the word for all time but it wouldn't change the meaning for the majority. The card analogy does not match up because it is not making an equivical comparison. To make such a comparison we would first have to determine how the cards already exist then explain why they have logical designed principles to create such sequences. The universe will continue to "work" reqgardless of anyones philosophical beliefs. Herein lies why naturalism/materialism self-destructs because if there was no transcendant God and creator then the naturalist world has the burden of explaining how this world exists at all. Not only can "science" not explain the why, but it can't explain the how either. If everything is material then how did it come from nothing? Beyond the existence, naturalism can't even explain the species as bacteria has never been observed to mutate into anything, it stays bacteria. Time + matter + chance doesn't equate to new species because it has never been observed and time creates disorder, not order. The Second Law of Thermodynamics makes this clear in the principle of entropy. Darwinism self-destructs. All of this requires the naturalist to have a great deal of faith and this is just one reason why I don't have enough faith to be an atheist.    [Know everyone here has heard this tired point.] >>How can someone honestly search for truth if they've already discounted a possible conclusion? That is what is happening when a naturalist dogmatically asserts that life arose spontaneously from it's non-living chemical components. Richard Lewontin confessed that materialism "cannot allow a divine foot in the door." This is pure, ideology giving way to unsupported theories. For the thinking Christian, based on the laws of logic and the observation of the evidence it requires more faith to believe in naturalism. There is such a thing as good science and bad science. Just as an example, bad science is believing in macroevolution JUST becuase microevolution can be observed. Unfortunately this sort of "science" is lumped into what is taught to the public as the only science and the public has unknowingly accepted it as truth. I come to my conclusions that best answers what we can logically determine based on observation and forensic evidence and is why I don't have enough faith to be an atheist.