Where are you getting these ideas of what conditions on Earth were like when life emerged??

From http://www.scientificpsychic.com/etc/timeline/timeline.html

and you can get a simiiar story here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_evolution

So science is saying that life didn't emerge until there were both oceans and atmosphere. So what is your problem?

BTW a God-style 'Creator' cannot explain where what exists came from, since a creator is by definition something that exists, and logically nothing can create itself.

There is no evidence that anything more that the lowest possible level of energy field was 'necessary' as a precursor to everything, so a Creator being is not only unnecessary, but is only a complication, something that makes things harder to explain in the context of current understanding of origins.

None of this is based on faith, but on a balance of probabilities based on searching for and evaluating all the available evidence. The only 'faith' involved would be that knowledge of reality is best gained from a direct study of reality, with the minimum of assumptions, and honestly following the evidence rather than our internal hopes and fantasies.

And of course, if there is somehow such a being overseeing everything, all the evidence that has some validation outside the world of fantasy and imagination is that such a being is an evil prankster, who treats us as his playthings to be tormented and tortured for his entertainment.

So your beliefs have absolutely no merit as explanations of existence or morality.

Faith is a substitute for knowledge, not a source of knowledge.

 

You are clearly projecting your mythical presuppositions onto this.

'God' and the creation story is by far the tallest tale involved here. What arguments do you have for your beliefs, apart from trying to discredit science?

The Earth's magnetic field does NOT 'decrease over time'. It changes more-or-less continually, and has many times gone through a near zero value as it changes polarity, as shown clearly by the evidence in the ocean floor spreading out from the mid-ocean ridges. It is indeed currently falling as it approaches its next reversal, after which it increase again. It seems to be formed by large electrical currents as the electrically conducting molten core of the Earth spins inside the magnetic field of the Sun.

You weren't there either, and you clearly have as much of an agenda as anyone, so that kind of comment betrays both your ignorance and unwillingness to honestly research the facts, as many of your mistaken statements about specific items make clear, such as the one about the Earth's magnetic field 'only decreasing' over time.

Your last comment far more clearly applies to religious faith than science. If it were true it would not explain how scientific theories are continually updated, occasionally overturned, by the other scientists, on the basis of better observations and new ideas. Scientists are thinking about it all the time, seeing if they can come up with a theory that fits the observation data even better than the existing consensus. If they can, there is probably a Nobel prize in it. Science relies on as many people as possible 'thinking about it' to test their theories to the max.

Whereas religious believers have often tended to go to war with or otherwise persecute and even kill those who don't believe exactly what they do.

Can the ideas about the composition of matter, the nature of electrical charge, etc, that led to the development of the technology we are currently using to discuss these ideas have just been 'made up', and therefore false??

 

I use my senses, and compare what I can personally perceive directly, and with the help of microscopes, telescopes, and such things to augment my senses, with what other people who appear to have investigated particular things much more thoroughly than I have. I read from a wide selection of such sources, to guard against getting taken in by someone's 'pet' theory.

I have a background of a grounding in science and technology and math from my University Engineering degree, and I have been following the development of Science and Technology for around half a century.

It all hangs together pretty well, IMHO, and when I see and use things like giant airplanes, computers, 3D cinema, the modern world of mobile computers and cell-phones which allows me regularly to see and talk to people on the other side of the world while walking down the street, to reject the validity of Science seems just pathologically, willfully, blind.

I have seen with my own eyes thru a home telescope the rings of Saturn, so I can identify with Galileo in his evidence-based revelation, which the Church of his time, relying on their tradition of religious revelation and faith, stubbornly denied for centuries.

So Keith, what have you perceived with your own senses that you feel contradicts Science?? Did you see God or Jesus?

And just what do you personally find most unbelievable about the Oort cloud, or the accounts of the history of the Earth I pointed to?

Let's grant that 'man' is self centered/self serving. Would you not say that 'man' is also generous and giving?

Let's grant that 'man' has got pride. What about it?

Let's grant that 'man' has got lust/passion. What about it?

Let's grant that man ihas got envy. What about it?

Are you asserting that 'man' does not have any qualities that are in contrast to those?

So why do you wear clothes? Why do you cut your hair? Why do you eat cooked food, and from plates with utensils?

But you've not shown why it's not possible.

 

 

 You see, these are many bare statements among countless other bare statements of many ideologies.They may be true, false, literal, metaphorical, technical, esoteric, original, ripped-off and accustomed to the local culture. And people can believe any and all of these, without discrimination. So belief is not very helpful. Shortly, you believe that the god temporarily sacrificed himself to himself, to save us from his punishment because he created us not good enough for the rules he made. Or some similar story based on your interpretation of scriptures.

This is why Buddha said: “Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”

Btw, this reincarnation into animals is just a parable for superstitious Indian villagers. Reincarnation as understood by scholars is an extension of the law of karma, the cause and effect. How could an insect resolve causes and relationships that were made in human form? How could a human consciousness fit into much smaller nerve system? 
Simple minds react to simple but profound statements of sugar and whip, like eternal reward in heaven or eternal suffering in hell. People with the Law in their heart do not need any beliefs, they do what is necessary because it is right. We can find such people among atheists and theists alike, if their theism would be disproven, they would continue regardless of that.

 

From a different angle, of personal testimony, I can recount an intense experience about 10 years ago as I felt myself finally purged of the last trace of any primitive regard for the ideas of God and religion. I was riding a taxi from the airport to my home after a wonderful SCUBA-diving holiday in the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu, where I had engaged in friendly discussion with a guy who was a believer. My mind had obviously been subconsciously wrestling with some of the points he raised, and had finally resolved them.

I am not going to claim outright that my 'transcendent' experience trumps any of yours, but I am just trying to get you to understand that religion has no monopoly on such experiences, which are clearly a fundamental capability of our minds, and can inspire entirely the opposite conclusion to yours.

I would also not take such experiences as proof of anything, other than the fact I just described, that they are a natural consequence of the way our minds work, and are probably a prime source and inspiration in many people for belief in God(s). Your particular life experience to that point will clearly largely determine the nature and direction of such experiences.

 

 

in suggesting that this conversation is primarily about what constitutes evidence. What can we know and how can we know it? 

Keith, however, exhibits all the signs of a ferocious confirmation bias and the chances we will get through to him are rather low. 

It's interesting that sometimes folk have difficulty making distinctions between imagining knowable material things and imagining conceptual and/or imaginary things. 

Still. Remember how you said that scientific truths (testable explanations) do apply to actual things in the material world, Keith?

We simply apply that principle of how we can know something, to everything our sense data (enhanced by instruments at times) perceives. 

Additionally, when faced with a mystery we cannot answer, we say we don't know.