Origins - what cause explains best our existence, and why? Philosophy and theology

Origins - what cause explains best our existence, and why? Philosophy and theology


This book aims to distinguish itself from other books based on the philosophical framework of methodological naturalism.  The author starts with the admission that there are two possible worldviews:

Either there is a Creator - Intelligent designer, or not. These are these two possible explanations of origins. No known third option exists. Claiming that " We don't know " is a third option is a logical fallacy. Ignorance is not an explanation of causality, but an admission of ignorance. We aim to explore and evaluate both hypotheses. Both possible causal mechanisms of origins, intelligent and mental, and natural ( non-intelligent ) causation deserve to be scrutinized, tested, elucidated and analyzed, in order to find the best, case-adequate answers of origins. In this book, we will analyze how information-based molecular machines, metabolic networks, and organisms operate, currently accepted explanations of origins, their shortcomings, and propose eventually intelligent design/divine creation as a better, more compelling explanation of origins. When i say, that just two worldviews exist, then i mean that theism does not restrict itself to the supernatural, but in a broader sense, it is an umbrella name that englobes all views where a superior being equipped with intelligence and conscience is inferred. Pantheism is in that broader sense, a form of theism. 



What Is Science?
Science is a systematic and logical approach to discovering how things in the universe work. It is also the body of knowledge accumulated through the discoveries about all the things in the universe.

The word "science" is derived from the Latin word scientia, which is knowledge based on demonstrable and reproducible data, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. True to this definition, science aims for measurable results through testing and analysis. Science is based on fact, not opinion or preferences. The process of science is designed to challenge ideas through research. One important aspect of the scientific process is that it is focused only on the natural world, according to the University of California. Anything that is considered supernatural does not fit into the definition of science. 15

Is science the only way to find truth? 
Claim: By definition, we cannot know (or care) about anything supernatural without granting admission to the supernatural into the world of sense data and defensible inference.
Response:  The Enlightenment was as much a Europe-wide political revolution as an academic revolution. The legacy of secularism is still going on today in academia, but a new momentum has emerged which is shaking the foundations of the so-called rationalists, materialists, secularists, humanists, freethinkers, sceptics, atheists, naturalists – which have without success tried to eradicate the legacy and traces of the Judeo-Christian heritage. Between the sordid sheets of the Enlightenment, Empiricism was born, giving birth to the foundation of modern secularized Science. The marriage of science to naturalism during the mid-to-late 18th century, propagated by the Scottish philosopher; David Hume, symbolized the brokering of a union of academia to materialistic ideology. The union endures until today. But the dam is breaking apart, and this crooked perverse union, sealed centuries ago, is slowly losing steam. The claim: What science cannot prove to us, mankind cannot know - is a strawman at its best.

The success of Darwinism was accompanied by a decline in scientific integrity. This is already evident in the reckless statements of Haeckel and in the shifty, devious and histrionic argumentation of T. H. Huxley ... To establish the continuity required by the theory, historical arguments are invoked even though historical evidence is lacking. Thus are engendered those fragile towers of hypotheses based on hypotheses, where fact and fiction intermingle in an inextricable confusion. ~ W.R. Thompson


Why should we not ask the questions, which science has no answer for? And why can they not provide us with intellectually satisfying answers to the deepest questions of our existence? There are points where the sets of science, reason, theology and philosophy and faith converge to an intellectually satisfying understanding. If logic and philosophical reasoning besides empirical verificationism have no value to make meaningful sentences and inferences in regards of origins, as pop-scientism propagandist Krauss has claimed, then why does he even use his own logic and philosophical claims, if there cannot be worthy understanding by using it? His claim that the universe is non-logical and cannot be understood is self-defeating and irrational. The claim that God is anti-scientific, and shall have no place in academia since his existence cannot be tested, is a philosophical claim of inexcusable ignorance, fueled by the wish of secular scientists to be the masters of the universe, to which the intellectual proletariat has to look up to and devour with eager and healthy appetite all that comes from their wisdom, and dismiss all other sources of intellectual knowledge.

What modern scientists might re-consider is the fact that the last indispensable outcome of the scientific endeavour must be:  "Ye must have faith". That is, we make part of a finite universe, and there is a black impenetrable curtain on the boundaries of the universe, which we cannot penetrate and look beyond. The mystery of the last reality will not be lifted during our existence here on earth. Goedel's Theorem applies.

Science can never know the Absolute Truth. Science must limit itself to investigations of observable phenomena to make inferences about reality. Theories can be falsified by observation. A common misconception about science is that it attempts to know Absolute Truth, that it seeks ultimate cause. Science does not attempt to know Absolute Truth. Rather, it attempts to provide an explanation of phenomena, an explanation that can be falsified by observation.

There are four requirements for an epistemology to be defined as science:
Phenomena of interest must be observable,
Hypotheses must be tested in the null form,
Conclusions are stated as probabilistic—within a margin of error.
The scientist must specify conditions under which the theory being tested can be falsified.

Gödel's incompleteness theorem
Perry Marshall:  The scientific method cannot prove, it can only infer. (Science originally came from the idea that God made an orderly universe which obeys fixed, discoverable laws.) Now please consider what happens when we draw the biggest circle possibly can – around the whole universe. (If there are multiple universes, we’re drawing a circle around all of them too):

There has to be something outside that circle. Something which we have to assume but cannot prove
The universe as we know it is finite – finite matter, finite energy, finite space and  finite time
The universe is mathematical. Any physical system subjected to measurement performs arithmetic. (You don’t need to know math to do addition – you can use an abacus instead and it will give you the right answer every time.)
The universe (all matter, energy, space and time) cannot explain itself
Whatever is outside the biggest circle is boundless. By definition, it is not possible to draw a circle around it.
If we draw a circle around all matter, energy, space and time and apply Gödel’s theorem, then we know what is outside that circle is not mattered, is not energy, is not space and is not time. It’s immaterial.
Whatever is outside the biggest circle is not a system – i.e. is not an assemblage of parts. Otherwise, we could draw a circle around them. The thing outside the biggest circle is indivisible.
Whatever is outside the biggest circle is an uncaused cause, because you can always draw a circle around an effect.

Unreasonable, blind and reasonable faith
There is no empirical proof of Gods existence. But there is neither, that the known universe, the natural physical material world is all there is. To prove, God does not exist, we would need to be all-knowing. We are not. The burden of proof cannot be met on both sides. Consequently, the right question to come to the most accurate, case-correct, evidence-based inference and conclusion does not need, require or demand an empirical demonstration of Gods existence but we can elaborate philosophical inferences to either affirm or deny the existence of a creator based on circumstantial evidence, logic, and reason.

Unreasonable Faith
Believing in something IN SPITE of the evidence. We hold an unreasonable faith when we refuse to accept or acknowledge evidence that exists, is easily accessible and clearly refutes what we believe

Blind Faith
Believing in something WITHOUT any evidence. We hold a blind faith when we accept something even though there is no evidence to support our beliefs. We don’t search for ANY evidence that either supports or refutes what we are determined to believe

Reasonable Faith
Believing in something BECAUSE of the evidence. We hold a reasonable faith when we believe in something because it is the most reasonable conclusion from the evidence that exists. The Bible repeatedly makes evidential claims. It offers eyewitness accounts of historical events that can be verified archaeologically, prophetically and even scientifically. We, as Christians are called to hold a REASONABLE FAITH that is grounded in this evidence.


Positivism and the Presumption of Atheism 
W.L.Craig: Positivists championed a Verification Principle of meaning, according to which an informative sentence, in order to be meaningful, must be capable in principle of being empirically verified. 5
Under criticism, the Verification Principle underwent a number of changes, including its permutation into the Falsification Principle, which held that a meaningful sentence must be capable in principle of being empirically falsified.
The statement “In order to be meaningful, an informative sentence must be capable in principle of being empirically verified/falsified” is itself incapable of being verified or falsified.
The inadequacies of the positivistic theory of meaning led to the complete collapse of Logical Positivism during the second half of the twentieth century, helping to spark not only a revival of interest in Metaphysics but in Philosophy of Religion as well. Today’s Flew’s sort of challenge, which loomed so large in mid-century discussions, is scarcely a blip on the philosophical radar screen.
If someone is asking for 100 per cent,  to truly know that God exists, we need to remind them this is unrealistic. We believe lots of things with confidence even though we do not have absolute certainty. 2
'"It is up to logic and the factors of different perspectives to determine if God exists or not."
The marriage of science to naturalism during the mid-to-late 18th century ministered most famously by the Scottish enlightenment philosopher; David Hume symbolized the brokering of a union which was nothing short of a shotgun wedding of academia to ideology.

We need to endorse a worldview that makes sense, and is a consequence of a carefully chosen and elaborated methodology of an epistemological framework, and applied to do a consistent, correct to the case research, and coming to meaningful, and the most accurate possible conclusions in regards of origins and reality. There are several ways, like rationalism, empiricism, pragmatism, authority, and revelation.
Rationalism holds that which is logical and consistent is true.

Empiricism holds that what can be systematically verified via sensory input is the way to accept the truth.
Pragmatism bases and derives its claims via practical life experience.
Authority is based on what experts say is true. And
Revelation holds that which God reveals is True; Revelations from God establish Truth.

A correct research to find truth is based on considering a mix of above. Atheists do commonly make the mistake to stick to empiricism and authority only. But someone has to consider the aspects of science, philosophy, theology, and applying reason, wisdom, and logic.

Can you use the scientific method to prove that the scientific method is the primary epistemology for truth claims?

The very greatest scientists, those from whom new perspectives finally come, those from whom paradigm shifts in human thought come, are open-minded on fundamental questions and begin to see the value of philosophy as a torchlight on the discoveries of science.

The average scientist is good at doing science but not much good at thinking about its implications. The average religious person is not so good at looking and understanding at what science has to say about reality and, more serious, seeing that science is more valuable than doctrines, traditions and authority systems about telling us about the true nature of things. 3

Every worldview, without exception, is a faith-based belief system, consisting of a set of statements the holder adopts as being true. Starting from this view, we can dispense with the foolish notion of "proof," as some are so quick to require (as though they have such proof for the worldview they currently hold). Instead of "proof" in the absolute sense, we proceed with examining the available evidence, which should point with confidence to the worldview that best accounts for that evidence. 4

While every worldview (from Atheism to Theism) is faith-based, or perhaps more accurately, confidence-based (no absolute proof), there is none that should be based on no evidence at all (a pure blind-faith). The rule of evidence examination and conclusions we draw from it: truth is that which corresponds to reality, anything that does not correspond to reality is summarily rejected as false.

Socrates said, "The unexamined life isn't worth living." Correspondingly, the unexamined worldview isn't worth believing. Let's go.

Many (if not most) of the really important things in life aren't subject to scientific, empirical investigation. You can't scientifically prove the beauty of the beautiful, or the goodness of the good. You can't scientifically prove that love is better than hate, or even that life is better than death. You can't prove scientifically the friendship of your best friend, and even trying to would only serve to queer the relationship in some way. The bottom line is, when you're experiencing the friendship of your best friend, you don't need any proof. And when you're not experiencing the friendship of your best friend, no proof will do. So it is with God.

Contrary to popular belief, there is no such thing as a scientific proof.
Proofs exist only in mathematics and logic, not in science.  Mathematics and logic are both closed, self-contained systems of propositions, whereas science is empirical and deals with nature as it exists.  The primary criterion and standard of evaluation of scientific theory is evidence, not proof.  All else equal (such as internal logical consistency and parsimony), scientists prefer theories for which there is more and better evidence to theories for which there is less and worse evidence.  Proofs are not the currency of science.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/200811/common-misconceptions-about-science-i-scientific-proof

Bo Jinn  Illogical Atheism: A Comprehensive Response to the Contemporary Freethinker from a Lapsed Agnostic
The union endures until today. Science, thus became the bride of a completely self-sufficient naturalistic worldview, a crooked union sealed by a single vow, as pervasive as it is perverse: “What science cannot tell us, mankind cannot know.” Bertrand Russell

Gordon Clark (1902-1985); A Christian View of Men and Things; 1952; p216, 227
There is no science to which final appeal can be made; there are only scientists and their various theories. … No scientific or observational proof can be given for the uniformity of nature, and much less can experience demonstrate that “the scientific method is the sole gateway to the whole region of knowledge.” On the contrary, a plausible analysis showed that science was incapable of arriving at any truth whatever.

J. H. Randall (1899-1980); Philosophy: An Introduction; p98
If we examine the history of science … we find that in each period a given theory is entertained by science as true. Shortly afterward, the theory is found inadequate, and is replaced by a new theory … These theories … cannot all be true. … A true theory would not be replaceable, for what is true remains true– unless of course what we are explaining no longer remains the same. Thus the theories of science are guesses, which are changed after the scientific fashions of the day, but none are faithful accounts of reality.

Karl Popper (1902-1994); Logic of Scientific Discovery; p278, 280
Science is not a system of certain, or well-established statements; nor is it a system which steadily advances towards a state of finality. Our science is not knowledge (episteme); it can never claim to have attained truth, or even a substitute for it, such as probability; we do not know, we can only guess.
The old scientific ideal of episteme– of absolutely certain, demonstrable knowledge– has proven to be an idol. The demand for scientific objectivity makes it inevitable that every scientific statement must remain tentative for ever.

P. W. Bridgman; (1882-1961); The Logic of Modern Physics; 1927/1951; p33, 34
… we can never have perfectly clean-cut knowledge of anything. It is a general consequence of the approximate character of all measurement that no empirical science can ever make exact statements.

Nicolas Malebranche, 1674 From The Search After Truth
Our senses were given to us for the preservation of our bodies and not for the acquisition of truth.

Historical sciences, and methodological naturalism
Methodological naturalism is necessary for science because science requires that as a precondition of investigating natural things. It is not necessary to elucidate historical facts, however. History does not investigate by empirically determining anything. Although history does seek to answer questions about the past, it requires only that the past is rational. Rational simply means that there is a reason. So if something did happen that was an act of God in the past, then as long as that act had a reason, history can investigate it.

Sean Carroll The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself.
Science should be interested in determining the truth, whatever that truth may be – natural, supernatural, or otherwise. The stance is known as methodological naturalism, while deployed with the best of intentions by supporters of science, amounts to assuming part of the answer ahead of time. If finding truth is our goal, that is just about the biggest mistake we can make.
Scientific evidence is what we observe in nature. The understanding of it like microbiological systems and processes is the exercise and exploration of science. What we infer through the observation, especially when it comes to the origin of given phenomena in nature, is philosophy, and based on individual induction and abductional reasoning. What looks like a compelling explanation to somebody, cannot be compelling to someone else, and eventually, I infer the exact contrary.

In short, the imposition of methodological naturalism is plainly question-begging, and it is thus an error of method. I am against methodological naturalism because it teaches us to be satisfied with not permitting the scientific evidence to lead us wherever it is. 

The result is that today's scientific papers do all beg the question and have to begin with the a priory assumption of naturalism, and no matter where the evidence leads to, it has to be pressed to fit the a priori assumption.  The result is that there is a common gap and huge discrepancy between the brilliance and intelligence of scientific minds committed to elucidate the most difficult secrets that life challenges us with, which are able to understand and fathom the intricacies of the molecular world, and the apparent incapability to grasp the very elementary fact, or either have to suppress the obvious fact of design and must assume that chance has the power to produce such complexities as evidenced in the molecular world which makes the most dramatic and fundamental of all the discontinuities of nature possible? the transition from non-life, to life. I pray that our mighty lord might take off the blinkers of these brilliant men and women. The complexity of a computer network collaborates in the Internet much the way cells collaborate in multicellular organisms and the way organisms compete and collaborate in ecologies. How can you not imagine that a manmade internet network could emerge by chance, but a multicellular network could?



The POSSIBLE causes and mechanisms to explain the origin of the physical world
There are basically 3 possible  causing agents of origins and the universe as a whole:

1. Of the universe and the physical laws: an intelligent creator, or random unguided natural events without external direction
2. Of the fine-tuning of the universe  and the origin of life: an intelligent creator, random unguided natural events, and physical necessity
3. Of biodiversity: an intelligent creator, random unguided natural events, physical necessity, and evolution

Intelligent design/creation stands for guided, reason-based, directed, planned, projected, programmed, information based,  goal-constrained, willed causation by a conscient intelligent powerful eternal, non-caused agency. Chance and evolution could be an included mechanism in the intended goal, but that would in the end still be an intelligence-based process.

Chance. What kind of causal power has a chance? Chance expresses the odds or likelihood of an event taking place. Chance isn't a thing or a mechanism or a physical being or a causal agent. It's not a directing force. Chance doesn't make anything happen.  It's only a way to quantify the probability of an event taking place. But in modern thinking,  chance is being transformed in the ingredient of evolution theory through random mutations, a causal ingredient of biodiversity. 
Physical necessity is  the term that is given to the situation where something is forced to take a certain course of action. Events that are conditioned by some values, forces, laws, norms or goals.  In physics, the concept of necessity was applied to cases of strict determination and restriction due to so-called causal laws. It's the hypothesis that the constants and quantities had to have the values they do so that the universe and the earth could not take any other course, than the one it did. 
Evolution: Biodiversity by evolution through random mutations and natural selection, genetic drift, gene flow, or pre-programmed evolution

If there is no God, then everything is a result of ..... what exactly?
Chance, as exposed above, isn't a thing. Physical necessity could only act once a physical universe exists. Beyond the universe, there were no physical laws.

Once it's granted that nothing has no causal powers, it's evident the universe could not have emerged from absolutely anything. Nobody times nothing equals everything is irrational to the extreme nonetheless, some very "smart" people think that proposition makes sense, and write extensive books about the subject ). Or, behind this complex universe is an incomprehensibly intelligent and powerful eternal being who made everything.

This result means that intelligent design cannot be removed entirely from consideration in the historical sciences. They are a division of history rather than science, and what applies to history, in general, applies to them. However, evidence must be found to support them.

We do not need direct observed empirical evidence to infer design. As anyone who has watched TV's Crime Scene Investigation knows, scientific investigation of a set of data (the data at the scene of a man's death) may lead to the conclusion that the event that produced the data (the death) was not the product of natural causes, not an accident, in other words, but was the product of an intelligence a perpetrator.
But of course, the data at the crime scene usually can't tell us very much about that intelligence. If the data includes fingerprints or DNA that produces a match when cross-checked against other data fingerprint or DNA banks it might lead to the identification of an individual. But even so, the tools of natural science are useless to determine the I.Q. of the intelligence, the efficiency vs. the emotionalism of the intelligence, or the motive of the intelligence. That data, analyzed by only the tools of natural science, often cannot permit the investigator to construct a theory of why the perpetrator acted. Sherlock Holmes can use chemistry to figure out that an intelligence a person did the act that killed the victim, even if he can't use chemistry to figure out that the person who did it was Professor Moriarty, or to figure out why Moriarty did the crime. 
Same when we observe the natural world. It gives us hints about how it could have been created. We do not need to present the act of creation to infer creationism / Intelligent design.

This illustrates why I am against methodological naturalism applied in historical sciences because it teaches us to be satisfied with not permitting the scientific evidence of historical events to lead us wherever it is. Philosophical Naturalism is just one of the possible explanations of  the origin of the universe, it's fine-tuning, has no answer about the origin of life, explains very little about biodiversity, and what it explains, it explains bad, has no explanation about essential questions, like the rise of photosynthesis, sex, conscience, speech, languages, morality. It short: it lacks considerable explaining power,  which attracts so many believers because they think, they do in their life whatever pleases them, no interference from above.

Probability and Science 
A typical misconception about science is that it can tell us what will definitely happen now or in the future given enough time, or what would certainly have happened in the past, given enough time. The truth is, science is limited in that it does not grant absolute truth, but only yields degrees of probability or likelihood. Science observes the Universe, records evidence, and strives to draw conclusions about what has happened in the past, is happening now, and what will potentially happen in the future, given the current state of scientific knowledge—which is often times woefully incomplete, and even inaccurate. The late, prominent evolutionist George Gaylord Simpson discussed the nature of science and probability several years ago in the classic textbook, Life: An Introduction to Biology, stating:

We speak in terms of “acceptance,” “confidence,” and “probability,” not “proof.” If by proof is meant the establishment of eternal and absolute truth, open to no possible exception or modification, then proof has no place in the natural sciences.

Luke A. Barnes:
Theory testing in the physical sciences has been revolutionized in recent decades by Bayesian approaches to probability theory.

Wikipedia: 
Bayesian inference is a method of statistical inference in which Bayes' theorem is used to update the probability of a hypothesis as more evidence or information becomes available. Bayesian inference is an important technique in statistics, and especially in mathematical statistics. Bayesian updating is particularly important in the dynamic analysis of a sequence of data. Bayesian inference has found application in a wide range of activities, including science, engineering, philosophy, medicine, sport, and law.  .......and......... historical sciences, including intelligent design theory which tries to explain how most probably past events occurred. That is similar to abductive reasoning :

Wikipedia: 
Abductive reasoning is a form of logical inference which goes from an observation to a theory which accounts for the observation, ideally seeking to find the simplest and most likely explanation. In abductive reasoning, unlike in deductive reasoning, the premises do not guarantee the conclusion. One can understand the abductive reasoning as "instant-deduction to the best explanation". 

No one can know with absolute certainty that the design hypothesis is false.  It follows from the absence of absolute knowledge, that each person should be willing to accept at least the possibility that the design hypothesis is correct, however remote that possibility might seem to him.  Once a person makes that concession, as every honest person must, the game is up.  The question is no longer whether ID is science or non-science.  The question is whether the search for the truth of the matter about the natural world should be structurally biased against a possibly true hypothesis. 

For, we did not – and cannot -- directly observe the remote past, so origins science theories are in the end attempted “historical” reconstructions of what we think the past may have been like. Such reconstructions are based on investigating which of the possible explanations seems "best" to us on balance in light of the evidence. However, to censor out a class of possible explanations ahead of time by imposing materialism plainly undermines the integrity of this abductive method.

Methodological naturalism is the label for the required assumption of philosophical naturalism when working with the scientific method. Methodological naturalists limit their scientific research to the study of natural causes, because any attempts to define causal relationships with the supernatural are never fruitful, and result in the creation of scientific "dead ends" and God of the gaps-type hypotheses. To avoid these traps scientists assume that all causes are empirical and naturalistic; which means they can be measured, quantified and studied methodically. 

The first difference is that historical study is a matter of probability. Any and all historical theories are supported by evidence that is not deductive in nature. We might consider them to be inferences to the best explanation, or Bayesian probabilities but they cannot be deductions. historical theories are not based on experiments, – repeatable or otherwise – nor are historical theories subject to empirical verification. The evidence for a historical theory may be empirical, but the theory itself is not. These differences mean that one cannot simply treat science and history as similar disciplines. 

Stephen Meyer: 
Studies in the philosophy of science show that successful explanations in historical sciences such as evolutionary biology need to provide “causally adequate” explanations—that is, explanations that cite a cause or mechanism
capable of producing the effect in question. In On the Origin of Species, Darwin repeatedly attempted to show that his theory satisfied this criterion, which was then called the vera causa (or “true cause”) criterion. In the third chapter of the Origin, for example, he sought to demonstrate the causal adequacy of natural selection by drawing analogies between it and the power of animal breeding and by extrapolating from observed instances of small-scale evolutionary change over short periods of time. 

Is the mind natural, or supernatural? and what does it tell us about the theory of intelligent design? 



Descartes, the 17th-century philosopher was a dualist, proposing that our consciousness/mind has a separate reality from our body. Is there a God-created soul and spirit and consciousness which exists apart from the body? This is a scientific a philosophical and a religious question. If there are a non-physical soul and spirit, then it might not be detectable by any direct physical measurement, and therefore, it might be, by definition, supernatural. I agree on dualism, based on clinical experiments and testimonies, and philosophy of the mind 9. Since the mind cannot be detected physically, it is a non-physical entity, and does not belong to the realm of the physical world, and is supernatural. 

1. The mind is supernatural 
2  The effects of the mind are natural, physical, tangible, visible, and can be tested scientifically. 

Popper argued that the central property of science is falsifiability. That is, every genuinely scientific claim is capable of being proven false, at least in principle. 

So can the substance of the mind be subject to scientific scrutiny and inquiry? No. 
Can the effects of the mind subject to scientific scrutiny and testing? yes. 

According to Discovery, the theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection. 10 ID is a scientific theory that employs the methods commonly used by other historical sciences to conclude that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.  ID theorists argue that design can be inferred by studying the informational properties of natural objects to determine if they bear the type of information that in our experience arise from an intelligent cause. The form of information which we observe is produced by intelligent action, and thus reliably indicates design, is generally called “specified complexity” or “complex and specified information” (CSI). An object or event is complex if it is unlikely, and specified if it matches some independent pattern. 

The U.S. National Academy of Sciences has however stated that "creationism, intelligent design, and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life or of species are not science because they are not testable by the methods of science." 11

So they question the fact, that the action of a supernatural agent cannot be tested by the methods of science. There is, however, a shift of terminology, while Discovery points to the effects of intelligence, and how features in nature point to an intelligent agent, the academy of sciences requires that the intervention, the act per se of creation, should be possible of observation, and testing. And if it does not meet that criterion, it's not science. Is that true? 

The distinction is basically operational x historical sciences. While through operational sciences  following questions can be answered : 

1. What is X (  Elucidating the components and structure )
2. What does X ( the action, how it works, functions, and operates )
3. What is the performance of X ( what is the efficiency etc. )
4. What is the result of the performance of  X  ( the result of the action. )

historical sciences ask: 

5. What is the origin of X ( how did X arise ) 

The action of X can be observed and tested in operational sciences. The action of X, however, cannot be observed directly in historical sciences, since events in the past are in question. 

Proponents of ID are accused of making a false distinction, and there is no such thing as operational x historical science. But Jeff Dodick writes: 

Despite the still-regnant concept of science proceeding by a monolithic “Scientific Method”, philosophers and historians of science are increasingly recognizing that the scientific methodologies of the historical sciences (e.g., geology, paleontology) differ fundamentally from those of the experimental sciences (e.g., physics, chemistry). This new understanding promises to aid education, where currently students are usually limited to the dominant paradigm of the experimental sciences, with little chance to experience the unique retrospective logic of the historical sciences. A clear understanding of these methodological differences and how they are expressed in the practice of the earth sciences is thus essential to developing effective educational curricula that cover the diversity of scientific methods. 10

Ann Gauger uses the same line of reasoning when she writes:
Defenders of methodological naturalism often invoke definitionally or "demarcation criteria" that say that all science must be observable, testable, falsifiable, predictive, and repeatable. Most philosophers of science now dismiss these criteria because there are too many exceptions to the rules they establish in the actual practice of science. Not all science involves observable entities or repeatable phenomena, for example --you can't watch all causes at work or witness all events happen again and again, yet you can still make inferences about what caused unique or singular events based on the evidence available to you. Historical sciences such as archaeology, geology, forensics, and evolutionary biology all infer causal events in the past to explain the occurrence of other events or to explain the evidence we have left behind in the present. For such inference to work, the cause invoked must now be known to produce the effect in question. It's no good proposing flying squirrels as the cause of the Grand Canyon, or a silt deposit as the cause of the Pyramids. Squirrels don't dig giant canyons or even small ones, and silt doesn't move heavy stone blocks into an ordered three-dimensional array.

However, we know from our experience that erosion by running water can and does produce gullies, then arroyos, and by extension, canyons. We know that intelligent agents have the necessary design capabilities to envision and build a pyramid. No natural force does. These are inferences based on our present knowledge of cause and effect or "causes now in operation." The theory of intelligent design also qualifies as historical science. We cannot directly observe the cause of the origin of life or repeat the events we study in the history of life, but we can infer what cause is most likely to be responsible, as Stephen Meyer likes to say, "from our repeated and uniform experience." In our experience the only thing capable of causing the origin of digital code or functional information or causal circularity is intelligence and we know that the origin of life and the origin of animal life, for example, required the production of just such things in living systems. Even though other demarcation criteria for distinguishing science from non-science are no longer considered normative for all branches of science, it is worth checking to see how well intelligent design fares using criteria that are relevant for a historical science. Briefly, although the designing agent posited by the theory of intelligent design is not directly observable (as most causal entities posited by historical scientists are not), the theory is testable and makes many discriminating predictions. Steve Meyer's book Signature in the Cell, Chapters 18 and 19 and Appendix A, discuss this thoroughly. 14

We can detect and make a distinction between the patterns and effects of a mind, and compare to the effects of natural causal agencies, physical and chemical reactions and interactions, and draw conclusions upon the results.  That's where ID kicks in, detecting design patterns, and test what is observed in the natural world, to see if they have signs of an intelligent causal agency, and compare the evidence with the efficiency of natural causes, to then, at the end, infer which explanation makes most sense, and fits best the evidence.   So intelligent design does not try to test or to detect or to identify the designer, nor try to detect and test the action of creation, and neither is that required to detect design and infer it as the best explanation of origins,  but examine the natural effects , and upon the results, draw inferences that can provide conclusions of the best explanation model for the most probable origin and cause of the physical parts. So the mere fact that a supernatural agent and its action cannot be scrutinized and observed directly and scientifically, does not disqualify ID as a scientific theory. 

Does Intelligent Design/Creationism require to be science to explain best our existence?
Robert Jastrow
"For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."



Once evolution is cancelled out in a origins debate, and gaps of knowledge cannot be tapped with it, things become very clear and obvious.
The origin of the universe, its physical laws, the origin of stars, planets, galaxies, the chemical elements, the earth, and life, are due to
- A creator
- Unguided random lucky events by no mechanism at all.
According to the most generous mathematical criteria, the second option is impossible to unimaginable extremes. By eliminative induction, 1 is most probably true.

When debating origins, the best way to get clear conclusions is to choose topics with the clearest outcome of which proposition wins.
In the case of the origin of life, its really basically random unguided events by no mechanism, or design by an intelligent agency.
ID claims do not require to be tested and falsified to top the naturalistic viewpoint. ( i do not concede that ID  can't be tested, but it's not necessary )
By simple reasoning and calculations, we can conclude with absolute certainty, that naturalism has far less a possibility to be true, than intelligent design propositions and conclusions.

Proponents of Intelligent Design / Creationism are often accused of promoting religion, not science. Even IF that were true ( i disagree, the claim of intelligent design can easily be tested and falsified ), I do not see ANY reason that ID must be scientific to top and have the better explanatory power of origins, than any alternative explanation. Creationism is not about promoting advance in science, but is an inference of origins based on the most cause-adequate explanation, an intelligent agency,  in contrast to no agency at all, which is the opposing viewpoint. ID/Creationism does not require to make predictions or elaborate working models that can be tested to top naturalism (  I will explain soon, why ).  The case in dispute is not natural models against supernatural ones or religion against science. The dichotomy is a creative intelligent agency against none. No new working models or explanations need to be formulated or invented - neither to explain our origins and even less to provide scientific innovation. The claim that ID taps gaps of knowledge with God is not justified since we know by experience that intelligence can create languages, codes, translation systems, cyphers,  information, factories, complex machines and production lines ( cells are self-replicating factories ), while randomness is too unspecific. An atheist can also not invoke that his counterpart, a Theist, is less prepared or educated to debate origins. The case in question can be understood by any average educated person. The issue is not the knowledge of the opposing proponents, but if the evidence is best explained by a creative intelligent agency, or not. I do not see either why a creation model should go through peer review since this is a flawed process, which is done by biased people and based on philosophical naturalism, which excludes the mechanism of intelligence a priori as a possible cause of our origins.  Furthermore, the consensus in science is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough, besides being an appeal to authority.

Our choice relies on a simple dichotomy. Either the universe, its laws, and life came to be by random, unguided lucky events, or through the action of an Intelligent designer/creator, which stands for guided, reason-based, directed, planned, projected, programmed, information based,  goal-constrained, willed causation by a conscient intelligent powerful eternal, non-caused agent.

Neither Evolution nor physical necessity is a driving force prior DNA replication: The origin of the first cell and life cannot be explained by natural selection (Ann N Y Acad, 2000)

The argument that chemical reactions in a primordial soup would not act upon pure chance, and that chemistry is not a matter of "random chance and coincidence", finds its refutation by the fact that the information stored in DNA is not constrained by chemistry. Yockey shows that the rules of any communication system are not derivable from the laws of physics.  He continues: “there is nothing in the physicochemical world that remotely resembles reactions being determined by a sequence and codes between sequences.” In other words, nothing in nonliving physics or chemistry obeys symbolic instructions.

Dembsky: 
We know from broad and repeated experience that intelligent agents can and do produce information-rich systems: we have positive experience-based knowledge of a cause that is sufficient to generate new instructional/specified complex information, namely, intelligence. Design constitutes an "inference to the best explanation" based on our best available knowledge.  It asserts the superior explanatory power of a proposed cause based upon its proven—its known—causal adequacy and based upon a lack of demonstrated efficacy among the competing proposed causes.  The problem is that nature has too many options and without design and intelligent guidance couldn’t sort them all out. Natural mechanisms are too unspecific to determine any particular outcome. An intelligent designer is a capable agent, able of planning, with the foresight of the end result, and the requirement of machines and pathways and manufacturing processes for an end goal and useful product.

The estimated number of elementary particles in the universe is 10^80. The most rapid events occur at an amazing 10^45 per second. Thirty billion years contains only 10^18 seconds. By totalling those, we find that the maximum elementary particle events in 30 billion years could only be 10^143.

The simplest known free-living organism, Mycoplasma genitalium, has 470 genes that code for 470 proteins that average 347 amino acids in length. The odds against just one specified protein of that length are 1:10^451.

Luck/chance/probability could theoretically form the right amino acid chain to form a helicase essential for DNA replication and arrange to find only left-handed amino acids, but it could  also select racemic, that is right and left-handed amino acids, and grow and attach them in any polypeptide sequence, most of which have no biological advantage and will not fold in the correct three-dimensional form . Natural mechanisms have no constraints, they could produce any kind of novelty. It's, however, that kind of freedom that makes it extremely unlikely that mere natural developments provide new specific biologically advantageous arrangements that add to get the first go of life.  Nature would have to arrange almost an infinite number of trials and errors until getting a new positive arrangement. Since that would become a highly unlikely event, design is a better explanation. This situation becomes even more accentuated when natural selection is not a possible constrained since evolution depends on replication, which did not exist prior to DNA replication.

It must also be noted, that the alternative to design, namely chance, only expresses the odds or likelihood of an event taking place. Chance isn't a thing or a mechanism or a physical being or a causal agent. It's not a directing force. Chance doesn't make anything happen.  It's only a way to quantify the probability of an event taking place.

Intelligent agents act frequently with an end goal in mind, constructing functional irreducibly complex multipart-machines, and make exquisitely integrated circuits that require a blueprint to build the object. Furthermore, Computers integrate software/hardware and store high levels of instructional complex coded information. In our experience, systems that either a)require or b)store large amounts of specified instructional complex information such as codes and languages, and which are constructed in an interdependence of hard and software invariably originate from an intelligent source. No exception.

All these are obvious facts to the unbiased observer, and permits to conclude ID as the most adequate explanation of the case of origins of our existence. There is no requirement to formulate working models, scientific hypotheses or theories. All that is required, is an unbiased mind, and logical reasoning, and simple evaluation of the capacity of the two competing models. Doing so, it should not be too difficult to find the best explanation.

Religion vs science
it's not rare that when I ask an atheist that denies God, what he would like to replace God with, the answer is often: Science...... not recognizing the logical fallacy that science is not a causal mechanism or agency, but a tool to explore reality.




The demarcation problem
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2635-the-demarcation-problem

Peer review: a flawed process at the heart of science and journals
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1290-peer-review-a-flawed-process-at-the-heart-of-science-and-journals

Good Science without Peer-Review 
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1919-good-science-without-peer-review

Science, the way to truth 
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2415-science-the-way-to-truth

According to a member at Dawkins foundation, science has proven itself able to provide the best estimates of the truth (i.e., what things are really like) based on evidence and processes, and upon testing,  it will be accepted by the scientific community. I have been told inumerous times while debating atheists and alike, that rather than using creationist blogs and websites as a source for information, i should provide serious, trustworthy, peer-reviewed scientific papers. Following a list which I consider especially precious. :=P

Is consensus in science an indicator for truth?
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1646-is-consensus-in-science-an-indicator-for-truth

Scientists, and bias
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1801-scientists-and-bias

Paley's watchmaker argument
William Paley (July 1743 – 25 May 1805) was an English clergyman, Christian apologist, philosopher, and utilitarian. He is best known for his natural theology exposition of the teleological argument for the existence of God in his work Natural Theology or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, which made use of the watchmaker analogy. 1



I love analogies, and Paleys watchmaker analogy is a classic: 

WILLIAM PALEY: Natural Theology or Evidence of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, collected from the appearances of nature  2, page 46 : 
In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there, I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there for ever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to shew the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch* upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place, I should hardly think of the answer which I had before given, that, for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there. Yet why should not this answer serve for the watch, as well as for the stone? Why is it not as admissible in the second case, as in the first? For this reason, and for no other, viz. that, when we come to inspect the watch, we perceive (what we could not discover in the stone) that its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose, e.g. that they are so formed and adjusted as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point out the hour of the day; that, if the several parts had been differently shaped from what they are, of a different size from what they are, or placed after any other manner, or in any other order, than that in which they are placed, either no motion at all would have been carried on in the machine, or none which would have answered the use, that is now served by it. 

My comment: Without knowing about biology as we do today, Paley made an observation, which is spot on, and has astounding significance and correctness, applied to the reality of the molecular world. Let's list the points he mentioned again:

- parts differently shaped
- different size
- placed after any other manner
- or in any other order

no motion would be the result. 

That applies precisely as well to biological systems, and cells. Each of these four points must evolve correctly, or no improved or new biological function is granted. How many mutations would be required to get from a unicellular organism to multicellular organism? Would evolution not have to go in a gradual slow, increasing manner from one eukaryotic cell to an organism with two cells,   3 cells, and so on,  to get in the end an organism with millions, and billions of cells?  Let's suppose there were unicellular organisms, and evolutionary pressure to go from one to two cells. What and how many mutations would be required in the genome? Mutations would have to provide the change of a considerable number of internal cell functions and created NEW information for AT LEAST all four requirements mentioned by Paley, but many more, as listed here :

1. Credit to: Steven Guzzi
2. Jeff Miller, Ph.D.,  2011, God and the Laws of Science: The Laws of Probability 
http://www.apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=12&article=3726
3. Luke A. Barnes, April 7, 2017,  Testing the Multiverse: Bayes, Fine-Tuning and Typicality
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1704.01680.pdf
4. June 10, 2010, The Independent Origins Science Education course
http://iose-gen.blogspot.com.br/2010/06/introduction-and-summary.html#methnat
5. Methodological naturalism
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Methodological_naturalism
6. Methodological Naturalism, Science and History
http://simplyphilosophy.org/methodological-naturalism-science-and-history/
7. Stephen C. Meyer, Darwin's Doubt pg.162
8. https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1284-near-death-experience-evidence-of-dualism
9. https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1662-the-mind-is-not-the-brain
10. Center for Science and Culture  Frequently Asked Questions
http://www.discovery.org/id/faqs/
11. Intelligent design and science
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design_and_science
12. John Oakes, May 5, 2013, Is human thought evidence of the supernatural or of the existence of God?
http://evidenceforchristianity.org/is-human-thought-evidence-of-the-supernatural-or-of-the-existence-of-god/
13. Jeff Dodick,  Rediscovering the Historical Methodology of the Earth Sciences by Analyzing Scientific Communication Styles
http://serc.carleton.edu/files/serc/dodickargamon-f.pdf
14. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/11/more_on_the_mec100891.html
15. https://www.livescience.com/20896-science-scientific-method.html?fbclid=IwAR1WmeeZRaM_YYCMnMR76gpy1bjnAvc3OfJqbZfv-Nj6rX1Ah_rj-qnAPM8

He continues: To reckon up a few of the plainest of these parts, and of their offices, all tending to one result:––We see a cylindrical box containing a coiled elastic spring, which, by its endeavour to relax itself, turns round the box. We next observe a flexible chain (artificially wrought for the sake of flexure) communicating the action of the spring from the box to the fusee. We then find a series of wheels, the teeth of which catch in, and apply to, each other, conducting the motion from the fusee to the balance, and from the balance to the pointer; and at the same time, by the size and shape of those wheels, so regulating that motion, as to terminate in causing an index, by an equable and measured progression, to pass over a given space in a given time. We take notice that the wheels are made of brass, in order to keep them from rust; the springs of steel, no other metal being so elastic; that over the face of
the watch there is placed a glass, a material employed in no other part of the work, but, in the room of which, if there had been any other than a transparent substance, the hour could not be seen without opening the case.

My comment: The choice of materials is also an essential ingredient and factor to be considered. Bones are totally different in terms of consistency than collagen - both essential for advanced multicellular organisms, and its synthesis is highly complex, ordered, it depends on the right substrates, right intake of the cell, complex mechanisms to transform brute forms of molecules into useful form, complex molecular machines, and manufacturing processes, and the information to direct the material to the right place. A lot of things to inform and to get right, in order for natural selection to choose just the right random mutations, no?  

This mechanism* being observed (it requires indeed an examination of the instrument, and perhaps some previous knowledge of the subject, to perceive and understand it; but being once, as we have said, observed and understood), the inference, we think, is inevitable; that the watch must have had a maker; that there must have existed, at some time and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use.

My comment: Now Paley goes to address the common objections: " We have never observed a being of any capacity creating biological systems and life."  
I. Nor would it, I apprehend, weaken the conclusion, that we had never seen a watch made; that we had never known an artist capable of making one; that we were altogether incapable of executing such a piece of workmanship ourselves, or of understanding in what manner it was performed: all this being no more than what is true of some exquisite remains of ancient art, of some lost arts, and, to the generality of mankind, of the more curious productions of modern manufacture. Does one man in a million know how oval frames are turned? Ignorance of this kind exalts our opinion of the unseen and unknown artist’s skill, if he be unseen and unknown, but raises no
doubt in our minds of the existence and agency of such an artist, at some former time, and in some place or other. Nor can I perceive that it varies at all the inference, whether the question arise concerning a human agent, or concerning an agent of a different species, or an agent possessing, in some respects, a different nature.

Objection: Does bad design mean no design? 
II. Neither, secondly, would it invalidate our conclusion, that the watch sometimes went wrong, or that it seldom went exactly right. The purpose of the machinery, the design, and the designer, might be evident, and in the case supposed would be evident, in whatever way we accounted for the irregularity of the movement, or whether we could account for it or not. It is not necessary that a machine be perfect, in order to shew with what design it was made: still less necessary, where the only question is, whether it were made with any design at all.

Objection: We don't know the use of a particular organ in a biological system:
III. Nor, thirdly, would it bring any uncertainty into the argument, if there were a few parts of the watch, concerning which we could not discover, or had not yet discovered, in what manner they conduced to the general effect; or even some parts, concerning which we could not ascertain, whether they conduced to that effect in any manner whatever. For, as to the first branch of the case; if, by the loss, or disorder, or decay of the parts in question, the movement of the watch were found in fact to be stopped, or disturbed, or retarded, no doubt would remain in our minds as to the utility or intention of these parts, although we should be unable to investigate the manner according to which, or the connection by which, the ultimate effect depended upon their action or assistance: and the more complex is the machine, the more likely is this obscurity to arise. Then, as to the second thing supposed, namely, that there were parts, which might be spared without prejudice to the movement of the watch, and that we had proved this by experiment,––these superfluous parts, even if we were completely assured that they were such, would not vacate the reasoning which we had instituted concerning other parts. The indication of contrivance remained, with respect to them, nearly as it was before.

Objection: Physical laws, rather than design, explain the origin of complex systems:
And not less surprised to be informed, that the watch in his hand was nothing more than the result of the laws of metallic nature. It is a perversion of language to assign any law, as the efficient, operative, cause of any thing. A law presupposes an agent; for it is only the mode, according to which an agent proceeds: it implies a power; for it is the order, according to which that power acts. Without this agent, without this power, which are both distinct from itself, the law does nothing; is nothing. The expression, ‘the law of metallic nature,’ may sound strange and harsh to a philosophic ear, but it seems quite as justifiable as some others which are more familiar to him, such as ‘the law of vegetable nature’––‘the law of animal nature,’ or indeed as ‘the law of nature’ in general, when assigned as the cause of phænomena, in exclusion of agency and power; or when it is substituted into the place of these.

Gods existence cannot be proven
Demand: All the religions make that claim for their specific god. Well, I want some proof, hard verifiable proof. 
Answer: This is one of the most common demands of Atheists and mentioned as reason for unbelief until the burden of proof is met. All which such demand demonstrates is the lack of epistemological sophistication of the skeptic. Usually, this challenge goes hand in hand with the claim that " There is no evidence of God's existence ". What they want to say however is, that there is no empirical proof. 



This is a silly epistemological approach and demonstrates the lack of understanding on the unbeliever's side how to get sound conclusions on origins. There is no empirical proof of Gods existence. But there is neither, that the known universe, the natural physical material world is all there is. To prove, God does not exist, we would need to be all-knowing. We are not. The burden of proof cannot be met on both sides. Consequently, the right question to come to the most accurate, case-correct, evidence-based inference and conclusion does not need, require or demand an empirical demonstration of Gods existence but we can elaborate philosophical inferences to either affirm or deny the existence of a creator based on circumstantial evidence, logic, and reason.

The seeker must also be willing to permit the evidence to lead wherever it is. He needs to be willing to put all his prejudices and bias aside as much as possible, and permit an entirely and exclusively rational approach, based on scientific reasoning and logic, that is, doing the observation, elaborating a hypothesis, testing when possible, and getting well-based and rationally justifiable conclusions. When dealing with the observation of the natural world, the question is, what mechanism explains best the origin of X. That is not the same as to ask, how something works, which is what empirical science deals with. That helps and advances the question of how something came to be when its mechanistic ( physicochemical ) working is known, and what contributes to that. Back in Darwins time, 150 years ago, there was no knowledge about the complexity of the biochemical reality, intracellular action and molecular world. Today, we have advanced understanding on that, and every day that passes, that knowledge adds up. 

The first question to answer is not which God, but what cause and mechanism best explains our existence. There are basically just two options. Either a creative conscious intelligent supernatural powerful creative agency above the natural world acted and was involved, or not. That's it. All answers can be divided in this two basic options and categories. While the atheist affirms, no God was required, the theist claims, God is necessary. Some atheists have argued that the can be many explanations, we just do not know them yet. I disagree. What can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence. 

The next step a seeker needs to elucidate is: What signs point to design, rather than non-design? What can be clearly attributed to the action of a conscious intelligent agency? ( or agencies - plural ? ) Then he has to move forward to actually understand how our natural world works. The better understanding and education, the better. Unfortunately, this is a huge hurdle, and many are too lazy to spend time to actually understand the natural world and prefer to see what fits best what they want, and then search for who provides the answers they want to be true ( bias is a big factor contributing to self-delusion ). That is a common approach by atheists. They prefer to rely on the claims of the four horsemen of atheism, Dawkins, Dennet, Shermer and Harris, and the pope of all, Darwin, rather than spending time and looking into the evidence by themselves. All they do, behaving in that manner, is disrespecting themselves, putting their souls at risk to be deluded by their own wishes and faulty approach, and if they are wrong, losing their eternity with God.





A smart epistemological approach about origins of our existence goes like this:

1. Asking: what is ? what exists? Answer: X
2. Asking: what are the possible mechanisms to explain the origin of X? Answer: Y and Z ( and eventually, other causes )
3. Is X better explained by Y or Z?
4. Concluding Y or Z, depending on where the evidence leads to.
5. Moving forward, and trying to identify as accurately as possible the precise identity of the cause, if it is an intelligent agent.

6. Number 1 and 2 is a continuing exercise of science, philosophy, and theology. Upon the advance of understanding, the conclusion is eventually re-evaluated, and changed, if sufficient reasons exist. 

Upon my understanding, intelligent design/creationism tops naturalism - materialism as best case-adequate answer in regards to origins. 

Atheists err when asking for material evidence to prove God's existence
Only a fool requires proof as a requirement of belief. For a rational person, strong evidence is sufficient. Skepticism requires that we be willing to change our beliefs if the evidence changes, it does not require us to take as true everything that can't be proven false.

The spiritual realm is by definition something else than the natural, physical world. Science can only test and falsify natural occurrences. It cannot falsify, observe, or test the thoughts of a mind. What atheists frequently claim is, that, since Gods existence cannot be tested, there is no evidence of his existence. It is not essential to test Gods existence in order to find evidence of his existence. Scientism is a wrong epistemological approach. Someone cannot describe how yellow smells or measure the weight of beauty or love. We cannot measure qualitatively different things. God is ontologically different. Just because something isn't materially provable, doesn't mean that it can't be reasonably inferred.

You can't test the quality of God because he is everywhere in everything. And he is infinite. So you can only test his effect on the quality, performance, or reliability on everything that exists.

There are no proofs, whether God exists, or not. To prove, God does not exist, you would need to be all-knowing. We are not, therefore, we cannot prove Gods existence or know that the natural world is all there is. The right philosophical question is: what is the best explanation for our existence. 

There is no need to prove Gods existence.  The spiritual realm is by definition something else than the natural, physical world. Science can only test and falsify natural occurrences. It cannot falsify, observe, or test the thoughts of a mind. What atheists frequently claim is, that, since Gods existence cannot be tested, there is no evidence of his existence. It is not essential to test Gods existence in order to find evidence of his existence. Scientism is a wrong epistemological approach. Someone cannot describe how yellow smells or measure the weight of beauty or love. We cannot measure qualitatively different things. God is ontologically different. Just because something isn't materially provable, doesn't mean that it can't be reasonably inferred.

Atheists ask constantly for observable and empirical proof of Gods existence. But they never apply the same burden of proof to their worldview without God. They rarely think about an alternative mechanism, and if that mechanism can be observed somehow. The standard crutches and claim are that evolution is a fact, and has been observed, and that settles the issue for most. And what cannot yet be explained, is postponed to " science is working on it". What we are constantly being accused of doing ( unjustly ), namely of using a God of the Gaps argument, is what they use to fill the gaps with naturalism. Self-delusion is in high demand these days.....

The spiritual realm is by definition something else than the natural, physical world. Science can only test and falsify natural occurrences. It cannot falsify, observe, or test the thoughts of a mind. What atheists frequently claim is, that, since Gods existence cannot be tested, there is no evidence of his existence. It is not essential to test Gods existence in order to find evidence of his existence. Scientism is a wrong epistemological approach. Someone cannot describe how yellow smells or measure the weight of beauty or love. We cannot measure qualitatively different things. God is ontologically different. Just because something isn't materially provable, doesn't mean that it can't be reasonably inferred.

Question for an atheist: Are you a non-believer because you cannot see, hear or touch God? or is it for other reasons?
If it is because you cannot prove there is a God, I want to propose another question.
But first, try this out.
Say "I love tasty food," but don't actually try to physically make an effort to say it. Use your mind to say it.
Okay, what exactly did you just do and how is it that you can hear yourself so clearly in your own mind. There is an action (you saying the statement) and its existence is clear to you, but to us that sentence that you just said "out loud" in your head doesn't exist to us.
Matter of fact I will ask you, right now, to prove to me that you just said, "I love tasty food," in your head.
Telling me you said that statement isn't showing me evidence as to its existence. Some of you may say, "Hey, well it is dumbass." Ok, I understand how that can be a compelling argument. Now lets consider that I may lie to you and tell you that I did say I love tasty food consciously, but I actually didn't. Well then, the physical act of telling someone you thought something isn't the most viable way of showing evidence as to what you actually thought. Therefore isn't proving anything.
To get to the point, I want to say that there are probably lots of things that don't physically exist in our world but have an existence. Just because you can't prove something doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
hopefully food for thought.

Objection: We have never observed a being of any capacity creating biological systems and life.  
Answer: We do not need direct observed empirical evidence to infer design. As anyone who has watched TV's Crime Scene Investigation knows, scientific investigation of a set of data (the data at the scene of a man's death) may lead to the conclusion that the event that produced the data (the death) was not the product of natural causes not an accident, in other words but was the product of an intelligence a perpetrator.
But of course, the data at the crime scene usually can't tell us very much about that intelligence. If the data includes fingerprints or DNA that produces a match when cross-checked against other data fingerprint or DNA banks it might lead to the identification of an individual. But even so, the tools of natural science are useless to determine the I.Q. of the intelligence, the efficiency vs. the emotionalism of the intelligence, or the motive of the intelligence. That data, analyzed by only the tools of natural science, often cannot permit the investigator to construct a theory of why the perpetrator acted. Sherlock Holmes can use chemistry to figure out that an intelligence a person did the act that killed the victim, even if he can't use chemistry to figure out that the person who did it was Professor Moriarty, or to figure out why Moriarty did the crime. 
Same when we observe the natural world. It gives us hints about how it could have been created. We do not need to present the act of creation to infer creationism / Intelligent design.

Atheists often ask for evidence to prove that God exists. They say that they want tangible, testable evidence that can be verified via the scientific method. Unfortunately for them, such a request is the wrong approach. Instead, they should look for evidence consistent with a Transcendent God. The Christian worldview proclaims a transcendent God who exists outside of and independent of the material universe. In other words, the Christian God is not dependent upon the material universe or its properties for His existence. To ask for scientifically testable, material, non-transcendent based evidence for an immaterial, transcendent God is the wrong approach because it is a category mistake So, for the atheist to work from inside his materialistic, non-transcendent worldview and require evidence for the non-material, transcendent God (which necessarily exists outside his perceived worldview) risks being a category mistake because it is asking for the non-transcendent evidence of the transcendent in a form that is restricted to testable, material form. It is like asking to have a thought placed on a scale. It doesn't work because they are different categories.

God has proven his existence to me
God has proven his existence to me. I cannot believe anymore, that he does not exist. To me, he DOES exist, and I am 100% certain about that. I am convinced about that fact, as much as i am convinced about the existence of the air i breath. And somebody could even torture me to death, and I COULD NOT stop to believe in his existence. His existence is overwhelmingly obvious through his creation, and direct revelation. BUT. I cannot prove you, what I am convinced of. You have to do your own work of forming an epistemological framework and then search for the truth of our existence.

Matthew 7:8
For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
But when you seek, it's actually not, that you will find the truth. But the truth will find you.

Revelation 3:20
Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.

Who or what created God?
This is a very common question made by atheists. There is consensus in science that the universe most probably had a beginning. If the cosmos had no beginning, then there would have had to be an infinite series of past events. However, it is impossible to traverse an actual infinite. Therefore, the universe cannot be infinitely old. Besides that, If the cosmos was infinitely old, it would have reached maximum entropy a long, long, time ago. Since it has not reached maximum entropy, it cannot be infinitely old without violating the second law of thermodynamics. Although physicists such as Krauss and Hawking talk about "the universe creating itself from nothing," they are using the word "nothing" to mean the vacuum energy, which is not a true nothing. To be more precise, being cannot emerge from non-being.  If the entire cosmos came from something, that thing must transcend our cosmos, that is, it must exist beyond the limits of our space/time continuum. We may call it the First Cause. The creator must be a self-existing power. He is not created; He is eternal.   He is the One who brought time, space, and matter into existence.  Since the concept of causality deals with space, time, and matter, and since God is the one who brought space, time, and matter into existence, the concept of causality does not apply to God since it is something related to the reality of space, time, and matter. The cause of the universe must have been non-material because if the cause was material/natural, it would be subject to the same laws of decay as the universe. That means it would have to have had a beginning itself and you have the same problem as cycles of births and deaths of universes. So the cause of the universe’s beginning must have been supernatural, i.e. non-material or spirit—a cause outside of space-matter-time. Such a cause would not be subject to the law of decay and so would not have a beginning. That is, the cause had to be an eternal spirit.

5 Easy Steps to refute naturalism
Either the cosmos
(1) had no beginning, or
(2) it had a beginning.
(1) If the cosmos had no beginning, then there must be an infinite series of past events. However, it is impossible to traverse an actual infinite. Therefore, the universe cannot be infinitely old. Besides that, If the cosmos was infinitely old, it would have reached maximum entropy a long, long, time ago. Since it has not reached maximum entropy, it cannot be infinitely old without violating the second law of thermodynamics.
(2) If the cosmos had a beginning, then it must have come from (A) nothing or (B) something.
2.A. Although physicists such as Krauss and Hawking talk about "the universe creating itself from nothing," they are using the word "nothing" to mean the vacuum energy, which is not a true nothing. To be more precise, being cannot emerge from non-being. 
2.B. If the entire cosmos came from something, that thing must transcend our cosmos, that is, it must exist beyond the limits of our space/time continuum. We may call it the First Cause.

Objection: If everything needs a creator, why does God not need a Creator? 
Response:  Not everything needs a creator or a cause, but everything THAT BEGINS TO EXIST needs a cause. 




Inductive reasoning: 
Inductive logic and historical observation...Inductive reasoning is a form of logic that is most characteristic of the scientific method itself, because it moves from the effects to causes which can yield the most likely conclusion for a certain body of data. In historical sciences, where we cannot make tests to find out how things came to be, all we can do is to find out what is, and from there try to find out how it most probably emerged. Evolution is too limited to account for the exceedingly intricate, complex, elegant , intervined, interdependent , irreducible complex, information rich elements we observe and discover in the cell.

Eliminative induction: 
William Dembski:  
Eliminative inductions argue for the truth of a proposition by arguing that competitors to that proposition are false. ( Contrast this with Popperian falsification, where propositions are corroborated to the degree that they successfully withstand attempts to falsify them ) Provided the proposition, together with its competitors, form a mutually exclusive and exhaustive class, eliminating all the competitors entails that the proposition is true. As Sherlock Holmes famous dictum says: when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. This is the ideal case, in which eliminative inductions, in fact, become deductions. The problem is that in practice we don't have a neat ordering of competitors that can then all be knocked down with a few straightforward and judicious blows.




Is attributing eternity to God special pleading? 
Its not special pleading to say God is eternal since this is exactly what the atheist has traditionally said about the universe: It is eternal and uncaused. The problem is that we have good evidence that the universe is not eternal but had a beginning, and so the atheist is backed into the corner of saying the universe sprang into being without a cause, which is absurd.

If logic does not account for justifiable special pleading then such logic is clearly flawed. Of course, an Infinite Creator Who created everything would involve a justifiable special pleading. Such a Creator would not be like the rest of us. It is as simple as seeing the difference between an Infinite Being (notice I didn't say "existence") and billions of "finite beings."
The One Infinite Being is clearly different. The One Infinite Being Who created all existence is quite different than those finite beings who are created by such Being.
It is as easy as seeing the difference between "those who have a beginning" who are finite versus an "Infinite Creator" Who has no beginning and alone possesses the attribute of Aseity.
In theology there are several (what we call) incommunicable attributes of God. 1. would be omniscience. 2. omnipresence. 3. omni-sapience 4. Asiety 5. immutability 6. I would include omni-temporal being. There are others. You see, only God is infinite everywhere. Only God is the Creator of the universe. Everyone else is different.
This is why we have something as basic as justifiable special pleading to account for this every clear difference between an Infinite Creator Who created everything.... and all other finite existences.

God is eternal and uncaused. This is not special pleading for God since this is exactly what the atheist has traditionally said about the universe: It is eternal and uncaused. The problem is that we have good evidence that the universe is not eternal but had a beginning, and so the atheist is backed into the corner of saying the universe sprang into being without a cause, which is absurd. 

The person committing Special Pleading is claiming that he is exempt from certain principles or standards yet he provides no good reason for his exemption. 
This is the key sentence in deciding if I am guilty of special pleading or not. The standards I have set for the universe and deny for God fall into my first premise:
Whatever begins to exist requires a cause

I say that this premise DOES apply to the universe and it DOES NOT apply to God.

Why it does apply to the universe:
Within this universe, every experience and experiment conducted by mankind shows that if nothing happens, then nothing happens. If you do not plant a seed, then a tree will not grow. However if a tree does grow, then a seed MUST have been planted. There is no alternative. Since this rule is consistent throughout the entire universe, it is logical to think that this same law applies to the universe itself. In addition to this we have evidence of such a beginning. We have discovered the once hypothetical background radiation which would have followed an explosive beginning to the universe. Red light shift indicates that all other galaxies are moving away from us. This would be very likely if the universe did have an explosive beginning but unlikely if the universe always was.

Why it does not apply to God:
Did God begin to exist? Scientifically there is no answer. The only answer can be found in theology and that answer is no. It is important to remember here that I am not changing or reinventing God so he fits with the criteria of this argument. The idea that God was eternal dates back to at least the writing of genesis which is well before the BCE./CE switch. So I am not fitting the facts to God, not am I fitting God to the facts. They are both the same. Once again the CFC of the universe is fixed. If the universe began (which is an accepted analysis of science), then its cause must fall within certain guidelines, which I established. The fact that the God described in the bible happens to fit these guidelines is not the product of theology but rather of coincidence.

CONCLUSION:
With my reasons for applying the criteria to the universe and not to God in mind I can safely say that I have not committed the logical fallacy of special pleading. The only case in which I would have done this is if God was supposed to be held to the same standards as everything else within this universe. From Goat's source :

Objection: The God hypothesis raises the question of who designed the designer
Response: W.L.Craig : First, in order to recognize an explanation as the best, one needn't have an explanation of the explanation. This is an elementary point concerning inference to the best explanation as practiced in the philosophy of science. If archaeologists digging in the earth were to discover things looking like arrowheads and hatchet heads and pottery shards, they would be justified in inferring that these artifacts are not the chance result of sedimentation and metamorphosis, but products of some unknown group of people, even though they had no explanation of who these people were or where they came from. Similarly, if astronauts were to come upon a pile of machinery on the back side of the moon, they would be justified in inferring that it was the product of intelligent, extra-terrestrial agents, even if they had no idea whatsoever who these extra-terrestrial agents were or how they got there. In order to recognize an explanation as the best, one needn't be able to explain the explanation. In fact, so requiring would lead to an infinite regress of explanations, so that nothing could ever be explained and science would be destroyed. So in the case at hand, in order to recognize that intelligent design is the best explanation of the appearance of design in the universe, one needn't be able to explain the designer.

God is not complex
Argument: If the complexity of the universe and life demands a creator, the creator must be even more complex. This leads to infinite regress of successively more and more complexity. 
Response: God is not complex. God is a remarkably simple entity. As a non-physical entity, a mind is not composed of parts, and its salient properties, like self-consciousness, rationality, and volition, are essential to it. In contrast to the contingent and variegated universe with all its inexplicable quantities and constants, a divine mind is startlingly simple. Certainly, such a mind may have complex ideas—it may be thinking, for example, of the infinitesimal calculus—, but the mind itself is a remarkably simple entity

Suppose we land on an alien planet orbiting a distant star and discover some machine-like objects that look and work just like a 1941 Allis Chalmers tractor; our leader says “there must be intelligent beings on this planet—look at those tractors.” A sophomore philosophy student on the expedition objects: “Hey, hold on a minute! You have explained nothing at all! Any intelligent life that designed those tractors would have to be at least as complex as they are!” No doubt we’d tell him a little learning is a dangerous thing and advise him to take the next rocket ship home and enroll in another philosophy course or two.

The point is that the leader was not trying to give an ultimate explanation of organized complexity. He was only trying to explain one particular manifestation of it—the tractors. In this context, it is perfectly reasonable to explain one manifestation of organized complexity with another. Similarly, theists are not trying to give an ultimate explanation for all organized complexity (including God) when they invoke God as an explanation for organized complexity.

Suppose we land on an alien planet orbiting a distant star and discover some machine-like objects that look and work just like a 1941 Allis Chalmers tractor; our leader says “there must be intelligent beings on this planet—look at those tractors.” A sophomore philosophy student on the expedition objects: “Hey, hold on a minute! You have explained nothing at all! Any intelligent life that designed those tractors would have to be at least as complex as they are!” No doubt we’d tell him a little learning is a dangerous thing and advise him to take the next rocket ship home and enroll in another philosophy course or two.

The point is that the leader was not trying to give an ultimate explanation of organized complexity. He was only trying to explain one particular manifestation of it—the tractors. In this context it is perfectly reasonable to explain one manifestation of organized complexity with another. Similarly, theists are not trying to give an ultimate explanation for all organized complexity (including God) when they invoke God as an explanation for organized complexity.

Alvin Plantinga's response to the "who created God?" The argument used by Dawkins: 
"Design doesn’t explain organized complexity (says Dawkins); it presupposes it, because the designer would have to be as complex as what it creates (designs). Perhaps, therefore, Dawkins means to argue along the following lines: there are really just two explanations of life: unguided Darwinism and an explanation, guided Darwinism, perhaps, that involves design. But the latter is really no explanation at all. Therefore the only candidate is the former. 

Here there are two problems. First, this argument doesn’t depend on the facts of biology; it is substantially independent of the latter. Is it likely that Dawkins would be offering an argument of that sort? If so, why would he claim that it is “the Evidence of Evolution” that “Reveals a World Without Design”? 

Set that problem aside for the moment; there is another and deeper problem with this argument. Suppose we land on an alien planet orbiting a distant star and discover some machine-like objects that look and work just like a 1941 Allis Chalmers tractor; our leader says “there must be intelligent beings on this planet—look at those tractors.” A sophomore philosophy student on the expedition objects: “Hey, hold on a minute! You have explained nothing at all! Any intelligent life that designed those tractors would have to be at least as complex as they are!” No doubt we’d tell him a little learning is a dangerous thing and advise him to take the next rocket ship home and enroll in another philosophy course or two. For of course it is perfectly sensible, in that context, to explain the existence of those tractors in terms of intelligent life, even though (as we can concede for present purposes) that intelligent life would have to be at least as complex as the tractors. The point is we aren’t trying to give an ultimate explanation of organized complexity, and we aren’t trying to explain organized complexity in general; we are only trying to explain one particular manifestation of it (those tractors). And (unless you are trying to give an ultimate explanation of organized complexity) it is perfectly proper to explain one manifestation of organized complexity in terms of another. Hence it is not the case, contra Dawkins, that an explanation in terms of divine design is a non-starter. Such an explanation doesn’t constitute an ultimate explanation of organized complexity (if God is complex, nothing could constitute such an explanation); but it is none the worse for that. 

A second point: Dawkins argues that “the main thing we want to explain” is “organized complexity.” He goes on to say that “the one thing that makes evolution such a neat theory is that it explains how organized complexity can arise out of primaeval simplicity,” and he faults theism for being unable to explain organized complexity. Now first, in biology, we are attempting to describe and explain terrestrial life, not organized complexity generally. And second: mind would be an outstanding example of organized complexity, according to Dawkins. Of course, it is uncontroversial that if there is such a person as God, he would be a being who thinks and knows; so suppose we take Dawkins to be complaining that theism doesn’t offer an explanation of mind. It is perfectly obvious that theists won’t be able to give an explanation of mind in general—they won’t be able to offer an explanation for the state of affairs consisting in there being at least one mind— because, naturally enough, there isn’t any explanation of the existence of God. But that is certainly not a point against theism. Explanations come to an end; for theism, they come to an end in God. For any other view of the same level of generality, they also come to an end. The materialist or physicalist, for example, doesn’t have an explanation for the existence of elementary particles or, more generally, contingent physical or material beings; that there are some is, from that perspective, a brute fact. It isn’t easy to say precisely what counts as begging the question, but to fault theism for failing to have an ultimate explanation of mind is as good a candidate as any. 

Here is the second attempt to reconstrue Dawkins’s argument. In The God Delusion, he argues that the existence of God is monumentally improbable—about as probable as the assembly of a flight-worthy Boeing 747 by a hurricane roaring through a junkyard. Now it is not monumentally improbable, he says, that life should have developed by way of unguided Darwinism. In fact, the probability that the stunning complexity of life came to be in that fashion is greater than the probability that there is such a person as God. An explanation involving divine design, therefore, is less probable than the explanation in terms of unguided Darwinism; therefore we should prefer unguided Darwinism to an explanation involving design, but these two are the only viable candidates here; therefore by an inference to the best explanation, we should accept unguided Darwinism. 

Clearly, a host of considerations clamour for attention here. Concede, for the moment, that unguided Darwinism is more probable than an explanation involving design; does it follow that the former is to be preferred to the latter? There is more to goodness in explanation than the probability of the explanans. And how secure is this alleged inference to the best explanation, as an argument form, or, more likely, maxim? If all the explanations are highly unlikely, am I obliged, nonetheless, to pick and endorse one of them? I hear a great roar from the Notre Dame stadium; either the Irish have scored a touchdown, or an extra point, or a field goal, or a safety, or completed a long pass, or made a long run from scrimmage, or tackled the opposing runner for a loss, or intercepted a pass. Suppose these eight explanations exhaust the field, and suppose the first is slightly more probable than any of the other seven; its probability, on the evidence, is .2. Am I obliged to believe that explanation, just because it is more probable than the rest, and even though its probability is much below .5? Whatever happened to agnosticism, withholding belief?..."

                    
Who is God? Attributes of God
Only the God of the Bible is described with the following characteristics:
Supernatural in nature (as He exists outside of His creation)
Incredibly powerful (to have created all that is known)
Eternal (self-existent, as He exists outside of time and space)
Omnipresent (He created space and is not limited by it)
Timeless and changeless (He created time)
Immaterial (because He transcends space)
Personal (the impersonal can’t create personality)
Necessary (as everything else depends on Him)
Infinite and singular (as you cannot have two infinities)
Diverse yet has unity (as all multiplicity implies a prior singularity)
Intelligent (supremely, to create everything)
Purposeful (as He deliberately created everything)
Moral (no moral law can exist without a lawgiver)
Caring (or no moral laws would have been given)

God is the supreme ( greatest ) being
a trinity
spirit
Self-existent
Self-sufficient
Sovereign
Transcendent
Simple
Wise
Wrath
love
just
immutable
holy
righteous
merciful
unequalled
inscrutable
unfathomable
unsearchable
Immutable
Impartial
Incomprehensible
Infinite
Jealous
Longsuffering
The Infinite Creator.

God transcends space and the universe
PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS FOR A CHRISTIAN WORLDVIEW J. P. MORELAND & WILLIAM LANE CRAIG page 518 
God transcends space is that we know, in virtue of the doctrine of creation, that God existing alone without creation is spaceless. For on a relational view of space, space does not exist in the utter absence of any physical reality, and on a substantial view of space, space is a thing or substance and therefore must have been created by God. In either case, then, God brings space into being at the moment of his creation of the universe. Without creation, therefore, God exists spacelessly. But the creation of space would do nothing to “spatialize” God, that is to say, to draw him into space. The creating of space is not itself a spatial act (as is, say, bumping something). Hence, there is just no reason to think that divine spacelessness is surrendered in the act of creation. If not, then omnipresence should be understood in terms of God’s being immediately cognizant of and causally active at every point in space. He knows what is happening at every spatial location in the universe and he is causally operative at every such point, even if nothing more is going on there than quantum fluctuations in the vacuum of “empty” space. God’s spacelessness would be the functional equivalent of an embedding hyperdimension of space. Just as a three-dimensional being could act in the two-dimensional plane in ways that would appear mysterious to the inhabitants of Flatland, so the transcendent God can act immediately at any point in our three-dimensional world.

Gods omnipotence defined
Many people would say that part of God’s omnipotence is that he can “do anything.” But that’s not really true. It’s more precise to say that he has the power to do all things that power is capable of doing. Power can’t make an illogical statement logical; it can’t create, for example, a square circle. And while an omnipotent Creator can make beings who possess free will, he can’t do that while at the same time controlling their behavior. This would be a contradiction that “power” cannot overcome. In other words, God could prevent all wrongdoing from occurring, or even most of it, but he couldn’t do so without blocking or limiting or overriding our free will.  If God’s plan was simply for us to do things, or to do things a certain way, than free will would not have been necessary. No, the purpose for which we were created is not to do things, although there are things that we do; it is instead for us to be in relationship with him, in the manner – roughly at least -– of spouses (in some analogies) or, more likely, of parent and child.

Illogical things such as "create a rock bigger than He can lift" or commit theistic suicide do not mean He is not "all-powerful." The English term omnipotent is understood by theists to apply only to things that are logical to be ALL-Powerful by. This would include the creation of matter and omnipresence and abilities that are within the logical realm of a progressive ORDER which does not contradict itself. You can not ask for illogical contradiction as a part of being all powerful.



How could God reveal himself to us?
If you were an intelligent software living in a virtual world of bytes, how would you show other intelligent software that humans exist? You can’t come out of the computer. You have to rely on humans coming to you. And even if they do, they cannot enter physically in the virtual world. Humans would need to resort to software in order to communicate with you. In other words, you will never ever be capable of interacting with humans directly. You would see another software that looks probably like you controlled by humans and you would need to trust that software is a human. 

God cannot get into creation as he exactly is, but relies on using matter to interact with us. The same happens with angels and demons. Every time a human has seen an angel, the angel has the appearance of humans but with wings or without wings, or made of fire, etc. They can manipulate the physical realm the same way as we can manipulate the software world. With all this being said, I think I know what I’m talking about. The full “Godless” atheist theory is just what it states it is, A THEORY. It is based on the empirical chain of beliefs at multiple steps. It is not science. It is pure philosophy.

Why does God not simply show himself to us?
Philosopher Michael Murray of Franklin & Marshall College makes the case that if God stays hidden to a degree, He gives people the free will to either respond to His tugging at their hearts or remain autonomous from Him. This is what happens in the narrative of the Garden of Eden. When Adam and Eve are tempted by the serpent, God’s immediate proximity to them is not evident. Perhaps the character is what you do when you think nobody is looking.

What if, in the words of Blaise Pascal, God has only revealed Himself enough to give us the choice of whether or not to believe? Pascal says, “There is enough light for those who desire only to see, and enough darkness for those of a contrary disposition.” If you prefer being an atheist, God values your free will more than His desires for you. If you are really after truth, then have an open mind and follow the evidence wherever it leads, even if you don’t like the conclusion.

God of the gaps, a justified refutation of arguments for Gods existence? 
The argument that God is a gap filler is really boring, a beaten horse ad nauseam. Its invoked in almost every theist-atheist debate when atheists are unable to successfully refute a theist claim. No, God is NOT a gap filler. God is a logical inference based on the evidence observed in the natural world. If a theist would say, ''We don't know what caused 'x', therefore, God.'', it would be indeed a 'God of the gaps' fallacy. What we say, IMHO is: ''Based on current knowledge, an intelligent creative agency is a better explanation than materialistic naturalism."  If one is not arguing from ignorance, but rather reasoning from the available evidence to the best explanation, is it not rather ludicrous to accuse them of launching a 'god of the gaps argument'?  Randomness is a hugely overplayed idea in modern science, a desperate attempt to fill a shrinking corner for materialist reductionism, just as the ‘God of the Gaps' is derided by said materialists as the alleged last resort of Intelligent Design proponents.

The claim that God is a gap filler is one of the most used refutations by proponents of naturalism when confronted with a sound inference of design based on POSITIVE evidence.  "I don't understand how something could have come about, therefore God!" or "hey, look at this, it's really complex and I can't see how it could have happened naturally" is not the logic of our arguments. God of the gaps is a comfortable way to try to criticize and reject our point and avoid to address actually the issues raised. Opponents of ID resort to it all the time, even when a robust case is made, with clear and detailed science-based observation, prediction, experiment, and logical inference and conclusion.  The evidence for intelligent design has not been shrinking in the last two decades. It’s been growing, while the barriers to explain origins through naturalism have grown.  This is obvious in regard to all relevant issues:  the origin and fine-tuning of the universe, life, and biodiversity.


1. if there is no money in the wallet
2. It's an argument of knowledge to say: There is no money in the wallet after you check. 
3. The same happens in molecular biochemistry. We checked, and science discovered that biological cells are factories, full of computers, hardware, software, a language using signs and codes like the alphabet, an instructional blueprint, complex machines, factory assembly lines, error check and repair systems, recycling methods, waste grinders and management, power generating plants, power turbines, and electric circuits. Now we can apply scientific logic.  How? Upon the logic of Bayesian probability, and mutual exclusion. Design and non-design are mutually exclusive (it was one or the other) so we can use eliminative logic: if non-design is highly improbable, then design is highly probable.  Thus, the theory of design is empirically responsive and is testable.
4. Intelligence can act towards achieving specific goals, and knows how to create codified language, and use that language to create blueprints, used to make complex machines, production lines, and factories. It can finely tune and arrange things to work in a precise fashion. it can shape and form parts that perform tasks by interacting like lock and key. None of all this has been observed to be achieved by any alternative non-intelligent mechanism. if anyone wants to propose an alternative to replace intelligence, it should meet the burden of proof, and falsify the claim based on empirical testing and falsification.
5. Hence, the argument of Intelligent Design as the best explanation of origins is based on observation, experiments and observation, gained knowledge and experience. Not from ignorance.  

Concluding a Creator as the best explanation of our origins is not an argument based on gaps ok knowledge and ignorance, but based on what we do know.
 
Ironically, when critics make this accusation, they are usually committing a "gaps" fallacy themselves. How so? These very same materialists (1) admit that gaps in the evidence for Darwinian evolution exist, and (2) assume that those gaps can and will be filled by materialist explanations. Otherwise, they wouldn't be attacking intelligent design for purportedly filling those gaps with "god." They can't make a "god of the gaps" accusation without also making a "materialism of the gaps" argument -- one that assumes the truth of their own materialistic outlook.

Objection: Theists are incredule towards abiogenesis, and evolution, despite the overwhelming evidence. 
Response: "Incredulous" basically means "I don't believe it". Well, there are good reasons to reject a certain "just so" story about how and biodiversity came to exist. That is the THING that theists are incredulous about - a *certain scenario* (Neo-Darwinism and abiogenesis, and that irreducibly complex  biological systems, and coded, instructional specified complex information ( blueprints ) could emerge naturally by orderly aggregation and sequentially correct manner without external direction,  that's only *imagined* about how various amazing abilities of animals and plants happened all by themselves, defying known and reasonable principles of the limited range of chance and physical necessity, mutations and  natural selection. The proponent of naturalism is "incredulous" that an intelligent creator/designer could exist, beyond and behind our entire space-time continuum, who is our Creator. But there is nothing ridiculous about that - especially if you can't personally examine reality to that depth - how do you know nature is all that exists? What IS ridiculous (IMO) is trying to imagine a *naturalistic origin* of these things.  ORIGIN is not the same as OPERATION. To study how biology works today is entirely different from giving a *plausible* account of how it came about to be in the first place.

Are Theists the Only People Who Have the “Burden of Proof”?
If nonbelievers in theism are going to argue that adequate answers exist without the need for God, they are at least going to have to provide sufficient naturalistic explanations. Asking to provide positive, compelling evidence that points to the fact that the natural world can have an origin by its own, is not the same as to ask for evidence that God does not exist. It is one of the most frequent logical fallacies seen  in atheism/theism debates.   That is called an affirmative conclusion from a negative premise.  This illicit negative occurs when a categorical syllogism has a positive conclusion, but one or two negative premises. Both sides however must be able to present and adopt a well-articulated, thorough-going positive worldview based on positive evidence that results in good reasons to infer naturalism or creationism/Intelligent Design. What the debater must present, is  a positive case for theism/atheism by reference to the evidence that favours a theistic/atheistic interpretation of reality.

Logical fallacies
Creationism / ID is false, therefore, (strong) atheism is true.   This is one of the most frequent logical fallacies of proponents of naturalism. "  That is called Affirmative conclusion from a negative premise  This illicit negative) occurs when a categorical syllogism has a positive conclusion, but one or two negative premises. Atheists must be able to present and adopt a well-articulated, thorough-going positive worldview based on positive evidence that results in good reasons to infer naturalism. What the debater must present, is a positive case for strong atheism by reference to the evidence that favours a naturalistic interpretation of reality. Asking to provide positive, compelling evidence that points to the fact that the natural world can have an origin by its own, is not the same as to ask for evidence that God does not exist. If atheists are going to argue that adequate answers exist without the need for God, they are at least going to have to provide sufficient naturalistic explanations. 

Limited causal alternatives  do not justify to claim of "not knowing"
Claim: We replace God with honesty by saying "we don't know". The fact that we don't currently know does not mean we will never know because we have science, the best method we have for answering questions about things we don't know. Simply saying "God did it" is making up an answer because we are too lazy to try to figure out the real truth.
Answer: There are basically just two options. Either there is a God, or not.  Upon the logic of mutual exclusion, they are mutually exclusive (it was one or the other) so we can use eliminative logic: if no God is highly improbable, then the existence of God is highly probable. Thus, the evidence against the existence of God is evidence of God. is evidence for creation.  The evaluative status of non-design (and thus design) can be decreased or increased by observable empirical evidence, so a theory of design is empirically responsive and is testable.

While the honest thing is to say, I don't know, at the beginning of a journey of research which worldview makes the most sense, it's dishonest to say that God cannot be known, and indeed, egotistical to claim to remain in ignorance, when the opportunity to know is readily available.

Do you see that? When you are faced with just a limited number of choices if you reject one choice you've got to opt for one of those that remain. So the question is, which option makes the most sense?

The standard crutches and claim are that evolution is a fact, and has been observed, and that settles the issue for most. And what cannot yet be explained, is postponed to " science is working on it". What we are constantly being accused of doing ( unjustly ), namely of using a God of the Gaps argument, is what they use to fill the gaps with naturalism. Self-delusion is in high demand these days..... Atheists, rather than admit a creator as the only rational response to explain our existence, prefer to confess ignorance despite the wealth of scientific information, that permits to reach informed conclusions.
 
John Lennox:
There are not many options. Essentially, just two. Either human intelligence owes its origin to mindless matter, or there is a Creator. It's strange that some people claim that all it is their intelligence that leads to prefer the first to the second. As far as the existence of the universe goes, it was either created or it was not created (that is the logical axiom called the Law of the Excluded Middle). If God as a causal agent is excluded, the only two alternatives to explain the origin of the universe are either an eternal universe in some form, or it came into existence without a cause. Both alternatives are impossible. We cannot reach now by successive additions of past events from no starting point. Nothing is the absence of anything and has no causal powers.   Atheists escape of not knowing is as claiming ignorance of how much is 0 + 0. 

Once, evolution is replaced by considering the constraints of the origin of life, things become pretty clear : 

Nobody in its sane mind would defend and advocate that  computers, hardware, software, a language using signs and codes like the alphabet, an instructional blueprint, complex machines, factory assembly lines, error check and repair systems, recycling methods, waste grinders and management, power generating plants, power turbines, and electric circuits could emerge randomly, by unguided, accidental events. That is, however, the ONLY causal alternative, once intelligent planning,  invention, design, and implementation are excluded, to explain the origin of biological Cells, which are literally miniaturized, ultracomplex, molecular, self-replicating factories. 

Either life was created, or it emerged through self-organization by natural, unguided, random events. Physical laws or necessity cannot be the driving force of the origin of the genetic code and the genetic information for the first living being. The simplest known free-living organism, Mycoplasma genitalium, has 470 genes that code for 470 proteins that average 347 amino acids in length. The odds against just one specified protein of that length to emerge randomly are 1:10^451. According to Borel's law, any occurrence with a chance of happening less than in one out of 10^50 is an occurrence with such a slim a probability that is, in general, statistically considered to be zero.

Paul Davies: 
The universe obeys mathematical laws; they are like a hidden subtext in nature. Science reveals that there is a coherent scheme of things, but scientists do not necessarily interpret that as evidence for meaning or purpose in the universe.
The only rational explanation is however that God created this coherent scheme of things since there is no other alternative reasonable explanation. That's why atheists rather than admit that, prefer to argue of " not knowing " of its cause.  

Luke A. Barnes:
“I don’t know which one of these two statements is true” is a very different state of knowledge from “I don’t know which one of these trillion statements is true”. Our probabilities can and should reflect the size of the set of possibilities. 

There are only these options.  Either is there an intelligent creator, or there is not. Those are the only options.  If there is no God, then everything is a result of ..... what exactly?
Chance, as exposed above, isn't a thing. Physical necessity could only act once a physical universe exists. Beyond the universe, there were no physical laws.

Once it granted that nothing has no causal powers, it's evident the universe could not have emerged from absolutely anything. Nobody times nothing equals everything is irrational to the extreme ( nonetheless, some very "smart" people think that proposition makes sense, and write extensive books about the subject ). Or, behind this complex universe is an incomprehensibly intelligent and powerful eternal being who made everything.

The capacity of atheists to invert things is remarkable. They claim to not being able to know what can be known and understood easily. And claim to know what nobody really knows for sure.
They claim to not being able to know how the universe and life might have emerged and what mechanism was most probably in play, based on the evidence. And on top of that, argue that this is the most honest position someone can take.
But they are absolutely certain of common ancestry, and that microevolution leads to macroevolution and biodiversity during long periods of time. That - they claim, is an unquestionable fact.
The inversion is evident.
Based on logic and reasoning, and the scientific evidence, we can infer with certainty that a causal agent was required to create all physical things, the universe, life, and biodiversity.
But in regard to chemistry, biochemistry, biology, evolutionary and ecological mechanisms, we know that things are EXTRAORDINARILY COMPLEX, cannot be easily known and understood. And in fact, many things, we still don't know. But atheists think they do.
The proponent of evolution believes that a theory from the 19th century is right, despite the fact that back then, knowledge in biology was limited, and that its rather simplistic explanation through mutations and natural selection is supposedly able to account for all biodiversity, bacterias, plants, fish, birds, apes, humans, body plan development, histology, and cell differentiation, the origin of pluripotent stem cells, and the enormous complex modifications observed in living beings , which are able to adapt to the environment.
Be aware of all these ultracrepidarianists. If you do not agree with them, they call you a pigeon playing chess, Dunning-Kruger and alike, but never really look into the mirror to see who is in front of them !!

The " I don't know"ist Church
I guess it's time to put the foundations of a new church and religion. No, it's not similar to worship Jahwe. Nor Allah. Nor Santa. Nor of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Nor the Pink invisible Unicorn ( PIMU ). It's the church of the courageous " I don't know"ists. The new churches name is IGNORANTE, and our Gods name is IDONTKNOW. Let's openly celebrate the lack of knowledge. People, you don't need to hide anymore, nor be ashamed. It's gonna be finally official now. It will be the next BIG movement, and if you were afraid until now, you can come out of the closet and declare yourself. If being willingly ignorant was tabu until now, we will unite and stand our man/woman towards the growing challenge of  Skeptics, Freethinkers, Pantheists, Theists, Deists, and united, be the force. Besides Theism and Naturalism, we will be the third answer to humanities questions of origins and place in the universe. Our official position will be to " not know ". No, we are not agnostics looking for an answer. I don't know is our final answer and solution. It settles it. It's NOT A SHAME, TO BE HONEST, AND CONFESS IGNORANCE. How can we best explain our origins? We don't know. What options are there, just theism or naturalism? We don't know ". How was the universe finely tuned? No idea. What about the physical laws? How could I possibly know? Was the universe eternal, or had it a beginning? That's not possible to answer. How did life begin? " We don't know". Let's celebrate NIHILISM, and refine it to its finest form !! We will start our evangelism campaigns, and challenge every Theist, and drag them down to our delightful ignorance. Our answer stands as the newest, finest, smartest philosophical approach and is undefeatable !! Let them try and they will see !! Become a don't knowist, and intellectual satisfaction guaranteed. Can I inform you my patreon account to start our first flyers campaign??!!

The Worldview of Naturalism and Atheism: Matter Only
In the year 1610, the French mathematician and philosopher Rene Descartes (1596-1650) wanted to find a good starting point to argue for the existence of the human spirit and, therefore, also of God and his power over material things. Descartes figured that the reality of everything he sensed, could be doubted, except the fact that he was doubting. His conclusion, "I think, therefore I am," was basically a religious affirmation. This demonstrated the existence of the human spirit, and from there he went on to affirm God's existence. From Descartes perspective, spiritual things are in essence separate from matter, and matter is completely "passive", with no rationality or creative powers, which are fundamentally attributes of God. Years later in the Enlightenment period, ironically, people forgot the main point of Descartes' philosophy but instead emphasized that human reasoning had become the foundation of knowing, and that the universe was a vast and impersonal mechanism of matter operating by fixed laws, without the possibility of miracles.

Similarly, the great physicist Isaac Newton (1642-1727) was a Christian who felt that nature and universe was a finely tuned "contrivance" or mechanism which operated passively according to mathematically precise laws and principles established by God, however, he also felt that there were supra-mechanical or "active" principles constantly operative in nature, which were produced by the intentional activity of spirits ---especially God. Newton felt that some of those active principles included magnetism and gravity, which seemed to be God acting on matter at a distance without physical contact between the masses. So, gravity served Newton as an argument for the governing work of God in the universe, and the presence of orderly structure in nature and the solar system were evidence of intelligent design. But again, as with Descartes, the main goal of Newton's apologetic was forgotten by most people, and eventually matter was thought of as having all the forces inherent in itself, existing independent of God. Ironically, a mechanistic, materialistic philosophy such as Newton had actually tried to refute, had come to be known as the "Newtonian" worldview. This worldview gave objective, real existence only to mass, weight and the three dimensions, but not to mind or spirit. The popularization of this "Newtonian" worldview was accomplished, not by scientists, but by literary writers and philosophers such as Fontanelle and Voltaire.

The ideas of Descartes and Newton, distorted by people in time, became the core of a new philosophy of the "Enlightenment" period, which said that the power of human "Reason" was the foundation of all knowledge. In addition, all human sensations and thoughts were a mechanistic result of the atoms in the brain. --- J.O. de La Mettrie asserted, "Let us conclude boldly then, that man is a machine," and further, that "the existence of a supreme being ...is a theoretic truth with little practical value." With the growth Enlightenment philosophy, naturalism emerged.

Is atheism a mere disbelief in God(s)?
Today, it is common to see the word 'atheism' being defined (by unbelievers) as "Lacking a believe in God." This has been a ploy by atheists, having found their position indefensible, to redefine 'atheism' in such a way that they do not have to defend it. It is a pathetic attempt at avoiding truth rather than seeking truth. It's easy enough to look up the word 'atheism' online and find the new definition:

Merriam-webster online:
"a lack of belief or a strong disbelief in the existence of a god or any gods"

In contrast, the "Shorter Oxford English Dictionary" (not so short at over 2500 pages) printed in 1967, defined 'atheism' as:
"disbelief in, or denial of, the existence of a God." Atheists who attempt to use this definition should be held to the old definition. To reiterate: Atheists have redefined atheism in a weaker sense for the purpose of avoiding the burden of proof. This disqualifies them as being 'skeptics' or 'thinkers' or 'seekers of truth'. Were they genuine in their skepticism, thinking, and seeking of truth, they would have a position or at least follow the arguments where they lead. As it is, they cower behind semantics, change the rules of engagement, and throw up meaningless objections like "I don't believe you".

W.L.Craig: I think it is very popular on the lay level because it exonerates the unbeliever from having to give any defense of his viewpoint. For him, atheism is just a psychological state and therefore it is neither true nor false. It is not a view. It's a description of one's psychology. Therefore the person who claims to be an atheist in this psychological sense makes no assertion and has nothing to prove because he doesn't make any claim. Philosophically a belief is just a certain type of mental state which means you accept a certain proposition as true. So it is absurd to claim that you have no beliefs. That is itself a belief – the belief that I have no beliefs. Think, for example, of babies who would have a lack of belief in God because they don't understand or have never heard the claim that God exists. But he thinks after you've heard the claim “God exists” then you have to have some sort of belief state regarding it. You are going to believe it or not believe it. 

The atheist is one who believes that God does not exist. The theist believes that God exists. It is only the agnostic who fails to have a settled belief about those propositions



Why do atheists try to justify their unbelief in God? 
Why do atheists all the time ask for empirical proofs for Gods existence? If you lack belief in a deity, yet spend tons of time debating people who DO believe in God and seeking to shoot holes in their beliefs, does this mean they are seeking to find God in a roundabout way (desiring to be persuaded)? Or does it mean that they think they are justifying in their non-belief and making themselves feel better and more warranted/justified to disbelieve in God by shooting down the believers in a creator ? 

A common argument is that there is no evidence or proof for Gods existence, and what cannot be backed up with evidence, can be dismissed without evidence. 
Whatever couldn’t be proven or disproven was in the  “realm of fiction or hallucinations..... But why the demand that proponents of intelligent design/creationism must produce empirical conclusive proofs for Gods existence, as if that is the be-all and end-all of all epistemological inquiry? Often, when I ask atheists, what evidence would convince them that design explains best the origin of what is observed in the natural world, they give no answer. Truth said, most of them never thought about the question. What would they consider good or compelling evidence and how would they define what is evidence of design in nature? The question they must answer is: “what evidence would you find compelling?” 

There is a huge body of work from many serious thinkers arguing the theistic God; there is no such body of work painstakingly arguing in favour of Santa Claus (i.e., the mythical figure), the tooth fairy, leprechauns, unicorns, mermaids. That’s why the theistic claim is a lot more credible.

It is much more plausible that the universe came about by the causal agency of God than by self-causation or random chance. We should accept the claims by virtue of the demands of rationality and plausibility, by which we also determine whether anything else is true.

It's pointless to ask for proofs. That's on the lowest level of an atheism-theism debate, reserved to the ones that have no education in philosophy and science.

Why do positive, active, strong militant atheists promote naturalism with such fervour and time spending? 
The best an atheist could do is stay silent and just keep his unbelief for himself. Atheism has nothing positive to contribute to anyone. It does not improve the lives in any way. It has no doctrine nor provides a guide for moral improvement. In many cases, it is a declaration of ignorance. Why many urges to proclaim to others what they do not believe is beyond me...

If the atheist's last answer to origins is: " I don't know" - why do they engage theists, to eagerly express their freely chosen ignorance and emptiness and void of life - meaning? Do they think they will convince theists somehow, that ignorance is bliss? Do they think, ignorance exercises some kind of positive force or influence or attraction to someone's life? - and for that reason, we shall know it? Not only that but as it seems, they believe theists base their views on gaps in understanding, despite the fact, that over and over it is demonstrated to them, that this is not the case ?! I cannot imagine of a more senseless endeavour, than weak atheists that have nothing else to offer and to do, then engage theists, to do nothing else than express their ignorance. Its as if a homeless, jobless begging hungry vagrant sits on the corner on a street, and sees a successful happy fulfilled person passing by, and trying to convince that person that his state of affairs is attractive and better than anyone else's one..... Go figure.

Atheists commonly confess ignorance and base it on the claim that there is no evidence of God. The consequence of such a position is:
the lack of
objective moral values
meaning of life
lack of recognition of the real intrinsic value of human beings
what really matters in life ( to love God, and your next )
hope
understanding
inner peace
knowledge
security

and become a playball of their own

desires
wishes
will
inclinations
insecurity
hopelessness
meaninglessness
lacks values
certainty of anything
decisions
egoism
greed
lack of goals in life
frustration
bad decisions
lack of direction in life
the consequences are:
Increase of crimes
homicides
abortions
suicide
betrayals
robbery
separations
destructuration of families
telling lies
envy

false doctrines and various isms which undermine the value of life, like
nazism
communism

and the ultimate fate and consequence is

to die and be judged upon their own sins and mistakes and paying for their sins and rejection of God in Hell forever and ever.

In many places, atheists express actively their non-belief in God. They most commonly criticize the bible as a book of fables and magic, not trustworthy. But why is that? First of all, the rationale for this thinking is logically fallacious.  The bible is false, therefore, (strong) atheism is true. That is an affirmative conclusion from a negative premise.  The illicit negative occurs when a categorical syllogism has a positive conclusion, but one or two negative premises. The proponents of strong atheism/naturalism, however, must be able to present and adopt a well-articulated, thorough-going positive reason and the evidence-based case using positive evidence that results in good justifications to infer naturalism or strong atheism. What the debater must present, is a positive case for strong atheism by reference to the evidence that favours an atheistic interpretation of reality. But why do so many actively pursue this endeavour with the fervour of a believer, to express their unbelief? What do active strong militant atheists try to achieve? Check and see any description of a Facebook group of atheism, what the goal of the group is, and you will not find a clear confession and delineation of goals. Question: Why are you not an A-UfOlogist ? or A-spiritist? Why do so many spend so much energy, time, dedication to express what they do NOT believe?

What is the goal of the active atheist? The outcome of atheism is that there are no real binding moral values and duties. There can't be if God does not exist.  Do whatever pleases you and what you want becomes the compass of actions. Get rid of God, and you do not need to fear God, nor that there will be judgment day, nor eternal punishment, nor hell. This seems to me to be the deepest desire of atheists. Get rid of God. He shall not exist. But why proselytize and try to convince others of this perspective and view of reality? Do atheists by doing this try to convince themselves that their worldview must be true? The more they repeat it, the more they believe it them self and the more comfort they get?  It seems to me, that is one of the view possible reasons. But is it really? Can our existence without God existing be comfortable? I think, it can't, but it will lead, if thought all through, to desperation and nihilism.  

The British philosopher Bertrand Russell, for example, believed that we have no choice but to build our lives upon “the firm foundation of unyielding despair.” Only by recognizing that the world really is a terrible place can we successfully come to terms with life. Camus said that we should honestly recognize life’s absurdity and then live in love for one another. Frankly speaking, atheism is boring, but knowing, enjoying, and serving God gives life purpose and excitement.  If the atheist’s worldview is correct, then we are nothing but the result of accidental chemical processes and our thoughts are merely chemical reactions that take place in our brain. Therefore, nothing you ever do, or say, or even believe matters. In the end, we all go back to “Stardust.” So, why argue? Why waste your time talking to someone about the truth or falsehood of something when it doesn’t matter in the end?   On what basis does human life have value? As Francis Schaeffer wrote: Modern man resides in a two-storey universe. In the lower story is the finite world without God; here life is absurd, as we have seen. In the upper story are meaning, value, and purpose. Now modern man lives in the lower story because he believes there is no God. But he cannot live happily in such an absurd world; therefore, he continually makes leaps of faith into the upper story to affirm meaning, value, and purpose, even though he has no right to since he does not believe in God. Modern man is totally inconsistent when he makes this leap because these values cannot exist without God, and man in his lower story does not have God.  It’s impossible to live consistently and happily within the framework of such a worldview. If you live consistently, you will not be happy; if you live happily, it is only because you are not consistent.  But as a theist, I believe I was created in God's image,  and therefore I am of great value.

Atheists use commonly two weights and two measures: They self-declare themselves ( not rarely ) as skeptics, free- THINKERS, on the rational side, and the "owners" of logic, but most often they endorse a passive position in regards to atheism, and a hypercritical one in regard of theism, and in special in regard to the Bible. Rather than scrutinizing both worldviews - theism, and atheism, they neglect to analyze the consistency of strong atheism ( most probably there is no God) but put a BIG eye to find holes in the views of theists. They remain skeptical of God and certain that most probably there is no God. They also hide by arguing that they do not defend any positive claim, namely that most probably there are no Gods, but all they do is doubt of the claims of theists ( and think, that way they can avoid the burden of proof ). If that was so, what an empty and senseless endeavour - are they also actively spending time in various FB groups and other places, promoting their disbelief in ET's, UFO's, FSM's, ghosts, a flat earth, a square moon etc. ? they are not true skeptics and honest seekers of the truth of origins, but fakers that only delude themselves, and the active ones try to drag others down to their ignorance in an attempt to find relief of their doubts.

The fantastic magical worldview of atheism
- magic producing a multiverse, and our universe
- magic producing its physical laws
- magic producing a supposed vacuum which supposedly gave rise to virtual particles which somehow expanded and gave rise to our expanding universe
- magically, a slight asymmetry of matter-antimatter pair production formed, 1 extra particle of matter for every 10 billion produced, that permitted the formation of all matter in the universe
- magic finely tuned the cosmological constant to the precise 10^120, permitting our universe to expand, and not collapse back to a singularity 
- magically finely tuned the fundamental forces on a razor's edge
- magically produced stars, and the earth, finely tuned to host life
- magic produced life
- magic produced a redundant genetic code, more robust than one million alternative codes
- magic produced the information for the first life
- magic produced the most complex factory in the known universe - biological cells
- magic produced objective moral values, where its always wrong to torture, rape and kill little babies for fun
- magic produced language, logic, intelligence, consciousness

and then - atheists accuse theists that their views are based on a magical being - God - go figure.

Strong atheism is a religion
A Strong Atheist Faith Statement might be as follows:
Faith that the supreme intelligence in the universe is me, embodied in my mind.
Faith that the appearances of design are false.
Faith that the first life self-assembled from warm chemicals in goo.
Faith that the universe is a self-induced, random occurrence.
Faith that a “multiverse” that we can’t see is a rationale for a random universe producing life (Anthropic principle is false).
Faith that my mind is an assembly of random mutations, with no actual purpose beyond survival of the fittest. (A Meat Machine).  Even so, it is the supreme intelligence in the universe.
Faith that the brain and the mind are one thing, inseparable.
Faith that there is no intelligence in DNA.
Faith that if I can’t sense it, it does not exist. (No metaphysical existence).
Faith that empiricism is the one and only true path to all-encompassing Truth and Enlightenment.
Faith in Evolution, which is unquestionable; it is non-negotiable truth. See “Heresy”, below.
Faith that, because Evolution is the non-negotiable truth, life has no meaning.
Faith that after death there are only worms.

A federal court of appeals ruled yesterday Wisconsin prison officials violated an inmate’s rights because they did not treat atheism as a religion. 1 “Atheism is [the inmate’s] religion, and the group that he wanted to start was religious in nature even though it expressly rejects a belief in a supreme being,” the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals said.
The court decided the inmate’s First Amendment rights were violated because the prison refused to allow him to create a study group for atheists. Brian Fahling, senior trial attorney for the American Family Association Center for Law & Policy, called the court’s ruling “a sort of Alice in Wonderland jurisprudence.” “Up is down, and atheism, the antithesis of religion, is religion,” said Fahling.“Atheism is [the inmate’s] religion, and the group that he wanted to start was religious in nature even though it expressly rejects a belief in a supreme being,” the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals said.

Atheism is the belief that there is no god. According to the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy: “Atheism is the position that affirms the non-existence of God. It proposes positive disbelief rather than mere suspension of belief.”2

Evidence Against Gods existence

Argument: There is no evidence for Gods existence. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. The phrase has been pinned to the famous Cosmos TV series creator and has been used many times by atheists to challenge the truth claims put forward by Christians.

When it comes to belief in God, is extraordinary evidence truly needed? If it is, does such a thing exist for God? Lastly, if such a standard is necessary, then does it also apply to the atheist worldview if it makes extraordinary claims?
What is ‘Extraordinary Evidence’?
Response: The proposition ‘God Exists’ has a rather high probability of being correct, and therefore, extraordinary evidence is not needed. The proposition nature is all there is has little probability of being correct, therefore extraordinary evidence is required.

The Practical Impossibility of Atheism
Atheist: We rely on logic, reason, and science.
Answer: How did logic and reason emerge? randomly? luck? If humans are just an evolved, ape-like being, the result of random mutations,, why should someone believe in atheists arguments? How could someone trust that his rationale makes actually any sense? Materialism claims that everything has a material cause. That would include human behavior. That would include the workings of the brain, which is said by atheistic materialists to be equivalent to the mind. Therefore we are the directed, not the directors of our actions. This, in turn, leads to the inescapable conclusion that no human belief, rationalization, or mental process can be relied on with respect to anything. A deterministic view such as this obviously undercuts the ability to direct one's own destiny or thoughts, for that matter. If our biological features, and more importantly our cognitive machinery evolved from some random forces of nature can we trust our brain and our thinking? the very thinking, belief or trust in naturalism which are the products of blind or random forces of nature?? Truth said: Atheists rely on wishful thinking, blind faith, and random chance as a powerful mechanism to explain our existence. Its a perfect example of non-reasoning, and self-delusion. Atheists are irrational and atheism is self-defeating.



[ Charles Darwin To William Graham 3 July 1881]”
“But then with me, the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would anyone trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?

C.S. Lewis
 “Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought. But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? It's like upsetting a milk jug and hoping that the way it splashes itself will give you a map of London. But if I can't trust my own thinking, of course I can't trust the arguments leading to Atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an Atheist, or anything else. Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought: so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God.”

Atheism shoots science in the foot and then shoots itself in the head! Atheism cannot account for the existence of logic and it has to deny the existence of truth ( Darwin himself doubted that the human brain which was the result of irrational processes could be trusted to be rational ) Without this two science is impossible! If you take the view of common ancestry and macroevolution as true, you cannot trust anything about what you think is true. How are you sure your thoughts are logical if they derive from a lucky evolutionary accident that was not logical at all?

Francis Schaeffer:
Modern man resides in a two-story universe. In the lower story is the finite world without God; here life is absurd, as we have seen. In the upper story are meaning, value, and purpose. Now modern man lives in the lower story because he believes there is no God. But he cannot live happily in such an absurd world; therefore, he continually makes leaps of faith into the upper story to affirm meaning, value, and purpose, even though he has no right to since he does not believe in God. Modern man is totally inconsistent when he makes this leap because these values cannot exist without God, and man in his lower story does not have God. 1

 Richard Dawkins
"DNA neither knows nor cares, DNA just is, and we dance to its music."

Morpheus - The Matrix
If the Bible were not true, nothing could be true - and if nothing were true then you couldn't even make sense of your question! (Or any question or any knowledge ). That's the absurdity of denying God - the one true source of truth. It's important to realize that to determine truth we need to not only have the right sources, but we must put them in the correct order of importance. Our own personal bias can also often play a big part in determining what we choose to believe is true. And if you don't have a solid basis for knowledge and truth, the result is you can't know anything and you will end up being deceived. Truth can be defined as that which corresponds with reality. (A correspondence theory of truth). However, the problem is - how do you know what reality is? How do you know what is real?
"What is "real"? How do you define "real"?" 

Mac Howell :
You believe ON SHEER FAITH, that something came from nothing (absolutely nothing?) -for no reason. Therefore, according to your belief system, non-material entities such as objective truth is a myth since even the most basic principles of logic are all produced by a random accident, as is even your brain. This, in turn, means that your every thought is a random, meaningless chemical fizz. So, if your belief system is true, then the comment you just made is nothing more than the accidental result of a meaningless chemical reaction, in a randomly formed chunk of brain matter. Newsflash my friend. No one gives a hoot about any so-called data produced by a randomly programmed computer. Such a computer would be inherently unreliable and the data would be presumed faulty. Therefore, when atheists say that the Universe is an accident, and nothing within it is designed for a purpose, including their own brains, they cede any right to have their randomly produced thoughts taken seriously. So, when you call anything "superstitious", your comment is nothing more than a bad joke, or more accurately, a self-deception that you pull on yourself. Like all atheists, you want to have your cake and eat it too when you claim that 1. God is a superstition and 2. You'd do well to constantly remind yourself that your thoughts,(according to atheism) are completely meaningless chemical reactions, occurring in a long chain of cause and effect from mechanical, purposeless physical forces acting on your equally random and accidentally produced brain chemistry and therefore, within an atheistic framework, your thoughts could never be meaningful or worth sharing.

The difference is not in the existence of the soul, or mind itself but in the concept of a designed, planned product of an intelligent Mind, as opposed to an accident generated from blind random chance. If your brain is designed to think according to rational, logical patterns and if it comes with an organic version of pre- installed software that allows it not only to function rationally but also to recognize its own rationality, then you can proceed to analyze problems with confidence that your thoughts truly possess rationality, meaning, value, and purpose.

The only design gives you that certainty of rationality, meaning, value and purpose. Blind chance can only produce a more random blind chance. Without the prospect of an Eternal Mind, all is meaningless. Plato and Aristotle recognized this and hence their concepts of non-material Forms and the Unmoved Mover. Later, Aquinas realized that the great minds of Plato and Aristotle had paved a road that can only possibly lead to the Triune God of the Christianity.

from all practical appearances we just shouldn't be here but here we are, you and i, and although we disagree on fundamental issues of life we are both apparently rational beings. But where does rationality come from? Ask that and we're back in the loop of causation. Every effect has a cause. That is, as you well know, one of the Basic Principles of Logic. It follows then that no effect is greater than its cause and as we observe our material world, sure enough, we can point to nothing that was not caused by something that was powerful enough as a secondary, instrumental, or material cause, to cause that effect. But when we come to the sticky, no material effects that we observe and even intuitively acknowledge, such as rationality, morality, objective truth, and objective standards of aesthetics, as well as the Virtues such as, "love of our family and fellow man is better than hate" suddenly atheism chokes!  Thanks to 
Rick Swindell:
If a man, obviously drunk, whom you have never met, stumbles up to you on the street and says to you "Your mother told me to tell you not to go home, the house is full of spiders." You will not trust what he says. Why? Because he is irrational, because, he is drunk, and we know that we cannot trust irrational sources. But if our brains are ultimately the product of a series of blind, irrational causes then how could we possibly know what truth is?
You might suggest that natural selection is not blind in the sense of being irrational, it picks the best, or picks what works. But blind, deaf, senseless random mutation has to produce anything and everything from which natural selection selects. Natural selection cannot create ANYTHING. It cannot select a green bug from four brown bugs. It is totally dependent on totally random forces.
It may select what works, but how or why would we imagine we could know "truth". Why would we imagine the idea of truth? Why would we imagine? And yet we do. And we believe there is such a thing as truth and that we can know it. 

Is God Real? Evidence from the Laws of Logic 2
If you take the view of common ancestry and macroevolution as true, you cannot trust anything about what you think is true. How are you sure your thoughts are logical if they derive from a lucky evolutionary accident that was not logical at all?
Most of us don’t think much about the physical or non-physical laws of the universe necessary for us to exist (and make sense of our existence). As an example, we usually take the law of gravity for granted; it doesn’t really matter how the law operates or what forces lie behind it. We simply accept the fact we live in a world where gravity is a reality. In a similar way, there are many conceptual laws we also take for granted. These abstract truths order our world and guide our exploration and experience. One area of conceptual truth involves a body of concepts we call the Laws of Logic. Is God real? The existence of the Laws of Logic may provide us with an answer.









Claim: God does not exist
Response: Some atheists go that far to make absolute claims about Gods supposed inexistence. Its easy to refute it.  Atheism tends to exalt reason, but it is actually irrational. Atheists tend to put a lot of stock in the empirical method and in logic. One cannot disprove God exists using the empirical method. You might reply: But I can't disprove a giant purple frog on Mars controls the universe, either. Granted, one can never disprove any given thing exists. The atheistic position denying God's existence, if based on the empirical method, is absurd. Why do I say that?  In order to prove the assertion No God exists experimentally, one would need to comprehensively know all of the reality. Comprehensive knowledge of reality is called omniscience. One would need to be omniscient in order to prove there is no God, but if one were omniscient one would, by definition, already be God!  So, based on empirical methodology, the only one capable of disproving the existence of God would be God himself!  But some would say you can indeed assert something does not exist if its existence is logically self-contradictory, such as a square triangle.  By definition, it cannot exist.  It is illogical for something to be a square and to also be a triangle. Again, granted, but this line of reasoning assumes logic and real meaning exist and are our basis for knowledge --something an atheist has no right to assert! The existence of God is not only logically possible, it is philosophically essential. One cannot prove logic exists unless one first presupposes a God in whom reason and meaning are transcendentally rooted, otherwise these categories are mere philosophical prejudices. Atheism is inherently self-contradictory. The evidence for the existence of God is there for all to see, only we refuse to see it. King David wrote: The fool says in his heart there is no God. (Psalm 14:1)  In other words, Atheism is irrational. Apart from God, there is no basis for truth or ethics.

What does the Bible say about atheism?
Psalm 14: 1
"The fool says in his heart, 'There is no God!' Corrupt up and injustices committed detestable; there is none who does good "

Genesis 1: 1
This is one of the statements that the Bible makes about atheism. We highlight two points: Atheism is nonsense. Denying the existence of God is foolish because the existence of God is obvious. The Bible in no time seeks to defend the existence of God because it is the most basic of all truths. The Bible begins already stating categorically: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth" 

Looking at the account of Genesis 1:1 for just a brief moment, the words in that first verse are quite remarkable. They are indicative of the incredible mind of God. God says in that first verse everything that could have been said about creation and He says it in such few terms. The statement is precise and concise almost beyond human composition. A well-known scientist named Herbert Spencer died in 1903. He discovered that all reality, all reality, all that exists in the universe can be contained in five categories...time, force, action, space and matter. Herbert Spencer said everything that exists, exists in one of those categories...time, force, action, space and matter. Now think about that. Time, force, action, space and matter. That is a logical sequence. And then with that in your mind, listen to Genesis 1:1. "In the beginning," that's time..."God," that's force, "created," that's action, "the heavens," that's space, "and the earth," that's matter. Everything that could be said about everything that exists is said in that first verse. Now either you believe that or you don't. You either believe that that verse is accurate and God is the force or you believe that God is not the force that created everything. And then you're left with chance or randomness or coincidence. The Bible says that God can not be known completely for us, but it can be sufficiently known:

God’s Wrath Against Sinful Humanity

Romans 1:20
18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools  

Ephesians 4:18
They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart.
 
Revelation 21:8
But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”

God is clearly seen in creation. Thus, atheism is considered foolish because it is irrational, is to go against the clear, reasonable. In fact, atheism is the greatest possible folly of existence. The atheist simply close their eyes to the evidence and closes his ears to reason. But for what reason he does this? This brings us to the next point:

The atheism of nonsense comes from the sinful heart of man
No person becomes atheist for argument's sake, but because of sin in his heart. There is no single conclusive argument to prove the non-existence of God. In Romans 1:19 the Bible says that atheists do not deny God by logic, but by injustice, "men suppress the truth in unrighteousness."
The Bible says that the atheist denies the existence of God because he decided to live for sin. That is, should the atheist that God does not exist. As Augustine said: "No one denies God unless that interests you that God does not exist"

The Bible says that even animals do not doubt the existence of God: "Ask, however, the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds of the air, and they will tell you; speak to the earth, and it will instruct you, let the fish of the sea inform the. About all they ignore the hand of the LORD has done this "(Job 12: 7-9)?. More than that, the Bible says that even the demons doubt the existence of God: "Do you believe there is a God? Very well! Even the demons believe - and shudder "(James 2:19)!.

Conclusion
The Bible disqualifies atheism as a valid belief, revealing its irrationality, inconsistency and incoherence. Thus, the Bible does not waste time with atheism, the bible worries about idolatry. The first of the Ten Commandments is against idolatry, not against atheism. The great danger of civilization is not that she does not believe in God, but she delivered the wicked fantasies and imaginations.
Men never cease to believe in something, because they are always in search of God, of meaning, of purpose, of eternal life. Thus, men are always making gods for themselves. Even atheists worship gods, either sex, addiction, money, status, or even a philosopher. The big question is not "Does God exist?" But rather, "What kind of God exists?". Therefore Jesus also did not bother much with atheism, but with idolatry. His concern was not only that people believe in God but who believe in the true God. He prayed: "This is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent" (John 17: 3).

Confirmation bias & willful ignorance - one of the main reasons to adopt atheism
“My-side bias” makes it difficult for us to see the logic in arguments we disagree with.  “Our results show why debates about controversial issues often seem so futile,” the researchers said. “Our values can blind us to acknowledging the same logic in our opponent’s arguments if the values underlying these arguments offend our own.” 1

Atheists, in most, if not all cases, aren't looking for evidence of Gods existence or proof. They are looking to find reasons that confirm what they want to be true. They look for validation. What they want, is to avoid God and find relief to justify to themselves what they want to be true.  They aren't interested in arguments, but when a theist makes them, the only aim is to find ways to refute and reject what points to a creator. It is called confirmation bias. Wiki: Confirmation bias, also called confirmatory bias or myside bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favour, and recall information in a way that confirms one's preexisting beliefs or hypotheses. It is a type of cognitive bias and a systematic error of inductive reasoning. People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs.

Many unbelievers find it intellectually more justified or defendable not to declare themselves openly as ( strong ) atheists. They do want to avoid the burden of proof -  they know it would bring their position into trouble.  They know that all no - God hypotheses are intellectually bankrupt and easy to shut down. There are no good reasons to apply Occam's Razor to God. So they either duck cowardly and say: I do not hold an epistemologically elaborated position - I just do not believe yours. They try to sell their fish like this:  "

We replace God with honesty by saying "we don't know". The fact that we don't currently know does not mean we will never know because we have science, the best method we have for answering questions about things we don't know. Simply saying "God did it" is making up an answer because we are too lazy to try to figure out the real truth."

Sounds nice, but engaging a theist just to try to bring him down to unbelief without offering a better alternative, without any real intention to actually honestly consider and evaluate his beliefs means to waste his time and behaving egoistically, to use him to solidify his unbelief in God. What he does not realize, that, by doing so, all he is doing, is a way of self-delusion. We, believers in the promises of Christ, know, that our efforts make sense, independently if the counterpart considers our light of truth, or not, because of 1. Our words can germinate one day. Atheists do not forget, and in a particular, future situation, when they are more open, they can remember, and the information can help them to come to God. And 2. The ones that reject the truth and die without coming to Christ, cannot justify that they did not be called to come to repentance. If they get lost, it's their fault. Not Gods, or his servants which did not follow Christs calling to go to the world to preach the gospel.

Then, besides the weak atheists, we have the  " We don't know-ists. ".  They proudly do put on display their willful ignorance like the adornment of a peacock and feel that trumpet it to the world how little they know about origins is not only a beautiful but intellectually very scholar and worth of admiration. They put things upside down and don't realize that their position is a sublime admittance of brainlessness, laziness, and irrational blindness, not smart, but on the contrary: intellectually disturbing. But their real motivations are clear. They express just another form of confirmation bias and use another tactic to justify their unbelief. Their cognitive dissonance which they obviously do not admit is obvious, we are not ignorant of it.

For this reason, not rarely, when an atheist or agnostic has exposed, what his motivations are, it makes no sense for a theist to engage such a person for much time. I have a long list of people that I blocked, because, they cannot handle the fact that their motivations have been exposed, and not rarely, they lowered the level to personal attacks. My way to deal with it is either blocking, or saying goodbye, and not engaging further. Our time is precious.

There are many out there that need their faith to be strengthened. And providing evidence in Creation that points to God is a formidable way.

Atheism & Self-delusion
I think the problem with spiritually blinded people is that they are so blinded that they have no idea how blinded they are. If they're totally spiritually blind, how can you possibly realize that they are blind? They'd have to realize how blind they are.  In order to know how blind they are, it requires visual skills in order to compare which means that if they're absolutely no good at seeing at all then they lack exactly the skills that they need to know that they're absolutely no good at sight and this explains not just atheists but the condition of almost the entire pantheon and various breeds of unbelievers. There is no worse blind man than the one who doesn’t want to see. The precondition to see is the will to see. Then God can open their eyes, and they realize where they were.

John 3.19: 
This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.

John 12.40: 
He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, so they can neither see with their eyes, nor understand with their hearts, nor turn—and I would heal them.

2 Corinthians 4:4: 
In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

2 Corinthians 4:6 
For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

2 Corinthians 4:3-4 
And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

The human heart is the hardest thing in the universe, harder than Iron. Harder than diamonds. We shall not expect it to change just because we have irrefutable evidence that there is a Creator. But God does miracles. Even today. If he turned a Saul into a Paul, he can draw even the most hardened atheist to him.

Acts 17:30
In the past, God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.

Ezekiel 36:26
"I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh."

I see it over and over: Atheists are throughout defeated in their reasoning that our existence can be explained without a creator. But once all arguments are exhausted, and they find themselves in a situation, where they cannot sustain what they tried to justify, rationally, they need to face the brute fact that God exists. And this situation demands that they make a decision. That is where will kicks in. C.S.Lewis brought it straight to the point, when he wrote, that atheists look for God, like a thief for the police station. A honest agnostic seeker, after his journey, and evaluating all evidence, has to come without doubt to the conclusion that Theism is the best answer after a critical analysis of the evidence that surrounds us. That brought Anthony Flew to abandon his views, and endorse deism. The quest of God IS one that demands us rationally to search him. An irrational worldview can only perpetuate based on blind faith, which unfortunately all too often is the case. But a worldview, to be true, must withstand rational, philosophic, and scientific scrutiny.

Many atheists, however, become misotheists, or indifferent altogether towards questions of origins, and God. We are often accused of making baseless claims when we point out why atheists are atheists. I agree everyone has its personal reasons and motivations. But a general picture can be outlined. An atheist, which cannot sustain his views rationally, rejects God because of will. He does not WANT ( will ) God in his life. He thinks life without God is better. He has the ( false ) perception and imagination that life without God will provide more freedom. And that it is not worth to obey a higher entity, whatever his laws are. Another reason is: Statistically, it is proven, that most people define their position in regards to religion when they are young. Older people are accustomed into a certain lifestyle and see no necessity of change

In the end, the big issue is spiritual. Surrender to God is a spiritual event and transition, that is provoked by the change and moving of the "heart" ( or your inner being ), moving from a spiritual dead life to a spiritual awakening, where God begins to dwell, interact, and live in the life of a believer.

I also think, God in his wisdom, wanted it so: It would not be just if people of higher intelligence would have an advantage over people with less IQ/education/instruction. So God made our position to HIM a quest of our heart, a moral decision. So there is equality. Even people with a certain mental deficiency can find and worship God, and become his children. 

What a blessing experience of all those, which have had the courage to be persuaded by Gods love and grace !!

1. https://digest.bps.org.uk/2018/10/09/my-side-bias-makes-it-difficult-for-us-to-see-the-logic-in-arguments-we-disagree-with/?fbclid=IwAR2lSycCHV2zcsypkyJb8h9-E47aTMycJOi881-ETOuhyAfgHKNFgest940

The Theory of Intelligent Design

Intelligent design is the claim that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such self-assembly spontaneously by orderly aggregation and sequentially correct manner without external direction. It is a modern form of the traditional teleological argument for the existence of God, modified to avoid specifying the nature or identity of the designer. Theories must be capable of being falsified by observing counter-examples.

Is Intelligent design science?
Claim: Science is the study of nature on nature’s own terms, and thus cannot study the supernatural. The absence of a transcendent supernatural deity is completely untestable on an empirically scientific level. A transcendent intelligent agency certainly makes sense, but that is empirically testable because the transcendent intelligent agent is not empirical.
Response: Stephen C. Meyer, Darwin's doubt: Design can be tested using scientific logic.  How? Upon the logic of mutual exclusion, design and non-design are mutually exclusive (it was one or the other) so we can use eliminative logic: if non-design is highly improbable, then design is highly probable.  Thus, evidence against non-design (against production of a feature by undirected natural process) is evidence for design.  And vice versa. The evaluative status of non-design (and thus design) can be decreased or increased by observable empirical evidence, so a theory of design is empirically responsive and is testable. Based on a logical evaluation of evidence, we can conclude that a design theory is probably true (if all non-design theories seem highly implausible) or is probably false (if any non-design theory seems highly plausible). A design inference does not claim non-design is impossible and design is certain, it only claims that design seems more probable based on scientific evidence and logic. This type of probability-based conclusion is consistent with the logic of science in which proof is always impossible, even though scientists can develop a logically justified confidence in the truth or falsity of a theory.

The scientific methods used in a design investigation are also used in historical sciences like geology, archaeology, evolutionary biology, and astronomy.  Many arguments against design are also arguments against every historical science.  But scientists have developed methods for coping with the limitations of historical data, and historical science can be authentically scientific.

One of the most common charges that intelligent design (ID) opponents, Advocates of methodological naturalism, is that the theory of intelligent design is inherently unscientific.  that ID is not real science. They will say that a real scientific theory must be testable against the empirical world, must make predictions, must be falsifiable, must be explanatory by reference to natural law, and so forth. They point to ID and say that it doesn’t meet all of these criteria, and therefore ID must not be science. But is that true? Are there really criteria that define whether something is science or not science? Well, if you ask philosophers of science (the academic experts on this question), they will tell you that no such criteria exists. Every attempt at formulating an ironclad set of criteria has ended up accidentally excluding what scientists consider to be legitimate scientific fields. There is no set of agreed-upon criteria for separating science from pseudo-science; it just doesn’t exist among philosophers of science. The question of whether something is science or non-science is both intractable and uninteresting. The real issue is not whether a theory is ‘scientific’ according to some abstract definition, but where the scientific evidence leads to, and how it is best explained. In other words, what mechanism explains best X. This procedure is obvious, but the attempt at demarcating between science and non-science is a favourite way and artefact of ID opponents. By calling ID non-scientific, they never to examine if the proposed causal mechanism is more compelling than theirs.

Creationism and Intelligent Design should be the default position in regards of origins
When it comes to the inquiry about origins and causal mechanisms/agencies to explain our existence, in my view, intelligence should be the default position, rather than naturalism and any non-intelligent causal mechanism. An intelligent agency makes sense because, in our daily experience, we observe intelligence to cause new things to happen and to create things that did not exist previously. Intelligence can act towards achieving specific goals, and describe how things should be done, and implement these projects. Intelligence knows how to create codified language, and how to use that language to create blueprints, used to make complex machines and factories. It can finely tune and arrange things to work in a precise fashion. it can shape and form parts that perform tasks by interacting like lock and key.

None of all this has been observed to be achieved by any alternative non-intelligent mechanism. Nobody in its sane mind would defend and advocate that computers, hardware, software, a language using signs and codes like the alphabet, an instructional blueprint, complex machines, factory assembly lines, error check and repair systems, recycling methods, waste grinders and management, power generating plants, power turbines, and electric circuits could emerge randomly, by unguided, accidental events. That is, however, the ONLY causal alternative, once intelligent planning, invention, design, and implementation are excluded, to explain the origin of biological Cells, which are literally miniaturized, ultracomplex, molecular, self-replicating factories. For that reason, if anyone wants to propose any alternative to replace intelligence, it should meet the burden of proof, and falsify the claim based on empirical experience and falsifiable testing. For that reason, Intelligent design should be in my view the status quo, the default position in regards of origins.

What's the Mechanism of Intelligent Design?
We don't know how exactly a mind might can act in the world to cause change. Your mind, mediated by your brain, sends signals to your arm, hand and fingers,  and writes a text through the keyboard of the computer  I sit here typing. I cannot explain to you how exactly this process functions, but we know, it happens. Consciousness can interact with the physical world and cause change. But how exactly that happens, we don't know. Why then should we expect to know how God created the universe? The theory of intelligent design proposes an intelligent mental cause as origin of the physical world. Nothing else.  

An intelligent designer creates through power, information input ( words ), wisdom, and will. But how exactly does this work? 

Ann Gauger :  
It's still worth considering how a mind might act in the world to cause change. The answer is we don't know. I sit here typing. My mind, mediated by my brain, is putting words into a computer program (designed by other minds, by the way), using my fingers to type. But how does it happen, really? Where does the impulse to press one key instead of another come from? And how do these words, products of my mind, communicate to others through their computer screens? [size=13]We can't really say how our own minds work to interact with the world, yet we know they do. It is our universal, repeated, personal experience that shows us that our consciousness interacts with our bodies to produce information, but exactly how it works is not known. So why should we expect to know how the agent(s) responsible for the design of life or the universe may have worked? The theory of intelligent design does not propose a mechanism (a strictly or necessarily materialistic cause) for the origin of biological information. Rather, it proposes an intelligent or mental cause. In so doing, it does exactly what we want a good historical scientific theory to do. It proposes a cause that is known from our uniform and repeated experience (to borrow a phrase) to have the power to produce the effect in question, which in this case, is functional information in living systems.[/size]

The answer is intelligence. Conscious activity. The deliberate choice of a rational agent. Indeed, we have abundant experience in the present of intelligent agents generating specified information. Our experience of the causal powers of intelligent agents -- of "conscious activity" as "a cause now in operation"-- provides a basis for making inferences about the best explanation of the origin of biological information in the past. In other words, our experience of the cause-and-effect structure of the world -- specifically the cause known to produce large amounts of specified information in the present -- provides a basis for understanding what likely caused large increases in specified information in living systems in the past. It is precisely my reliance on such experience that makes possible an understanding of the type of causes at work in the history of life.

Meyer, Darwin's doubt: 
At present no one has any idea how our thoughts—the decisions and choices that occur in our conscious minds— affect our material brains, nerves, and muscles, going on to instantiate our will in the material world of objects. However, we know that is exactly what our thoughts do. We have no mechanistic explanation for the mystery of consciousness, nor what is called the “mind-body problem”—the enigma of how thought affects the material state of our brains, bodies, and the world that we affect with them. Yet there is no doubt that we can—as the result of events in our conscious minds called decisions or choices—“will into existence” information-rich arrangements of matter or otherwise affect material states in the world. Professor Asher did this when he wrote the chapter in his book— representing his ideas impressed as words onto a material object, a printed page—attempting to refute intelligent design. I am doing this right now. This example, representative of countless daily experiences in life, surely satisfies the demands of uniformitarianism. Even though it remains entirely possible that we may never know how minds affect matter and, therefore, that there may always be a gap in our attempt to account for how a designing mind affected the material out of which living systems were formed, it does not follow that we cannot recognize evidence of the activity of mind in living systems.

In Genesis, it says God spoke and things came into existence. God is a potent cause with power ( energy ) and his spoken word indicates information.  Because we do not understand and in a detailed manner how he created the physical universe, and life, does not mean God does not understand or can't. The mystery to us is not a mystery to God, but we do know that God is not limited to His spiritual realm, as he shown with his becoming of flesh in Jesus Christ.


The Dover case, a good argument against ID?
Ask ANY real scientist, if he thinks the best way to proceed in scientific truth, is to have courts of law decide what scientific theories should be accepted.

John E. Jones, III is one of the most incompetent judges on the bench. His decision simply parroted the ACLU argument. He had ZERO judicial experience before being appointed. He was a rich lawyer who twice lost elections for office. Oh yeah, he was appointed to head the PA Liquor Control Board prior to being appointed to the federal bench! His decision was far more about maintaining his presence at country club cocktail parties than it was about law!!

everybody who has ever had experience in a courtroom (in ANY country), knows that courtrooms are literally full of lies, nonsense, injustice, and obfuscation. Only a fool would today claim that "truth" is best resolved, or in fact resolved at all in a modern courtroom. It matters not whether the case is big or small, rich or poor, intelligent or moronic. Courtrooms are of course run by lawyers, and without prejudice, lawyers are human beings, most of whom are motivated mainly by money, secondly by political passion, and perhaps as a limping third, justice and truth. Or at least community justice, or perhaps pragmatism.

Yet when a court rules in favour of the cause of Evolution, we are suddenly treated to the most amazing fairy-story of all: Courts are now the "ultimate" arbiters of truth: Perhaps even the best discoverers and establishers of scientific truth. Suddenly, the lawyers have become our heroes, accurately dissecting the bitter pill of Intelligent Design, to discover the horror of Creationism, masquerading as 'science' and daring to "infect our children".

Please. If a person born anytime during the post-war baby-boom knows anything, he knows this is pure horse manure. I'm telling you what everybody already knows: After the Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassinations,
the Viet Nam war, and Nixon, the Bush elections and Arnold Schwarzenegger, the O.J. Simpson trials and Hurricane Katrina, the Gulf Oil spills and Enron, nobody does, nor should they, trust the government, courts, politicians or lawyers. It's not about age groups, its about history. But lest there be any doubt,


Revised Report of Stephen C. Meyer, Ph.D. May 19, 2005 Case: Tammy Kitzmiller, et al v. Dover Area School District and Dover Area School District Board of Directors
https://ncse.com/files/pub/legal/kitzmiller/2005-10_amicus_briefs/2005-10-17_DI_Kitzmiller_AppA_Meyer.pdf

If intelligent design theorists do manage to publish in a peer-reviewed science journal, Darwinists will make sure the editor suffers grievously for it.



https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2247-if-intelligent-design-theorists-do-manage-to-publish-in-a-peer-reviewed-science-journal-darwinists-will-make-sure-the-editor-suffers-grievously-for-it8


The central dogma of intelligent design
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2714-the-central-dogma-of-intelligent-design

Does bad design mean no design ? 
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1302-does-bad-design-mean-no-design

Confirmation of intelligent design predictions


Observation: Intelligent agents act frequently with an end goal in mind, constructing functional irreducibly complex multipart-machines, and make exquisitely integrated circuits that require a blueprint to build the object. Furthermore, Computers integrate software/hardware and store high levels of instructional complex coded information. In our experience, systems that either a)require or b)store large amounts of specified instructional complex information such as codes and languages, and which are constructed in an interdependence of hard and software invariably originate from an intelligent source. No exception.


Hypothesis (Prediction): Natural structures will be found that contain many parts arranged in intricate patterns, metabolic pathways similar to electronic circuits, and irreducible structures that perform specific functions -- indicating high levels of  Information, irreducible complexity, and interdependence, like hard/software.


Experiment: Experimental investigations of DNA, epigenetic codes, and metabolic circuits indicate that biological molecular machines and factories ( Cells ) are full of information-rich, language-based codes and code/blueprint-based structures. Biologists have performed mutational sensitivity tests in proteins and determined that their amino acid sequences, in order to provide function, require highly instructional complex coded information stored in the Genome.   Additionally, it has been found out, that cells require and use various epigenetic codes, namely  Splicing Codes,  Metabolic Codes,  Signal Transduction Codes,  Signal Integration Codes Histone Codes, Tubulin Codes, Sugar Codes, and The Glycomic Code. Furthermore, all kind of irreducibly complex molecular machines and biosynthesis performing and metabolic pathways have been found, which could not keep their basic functions without a minimal number of parts and complex inter-wined and interdependent structures. That indicates these biological machines and pathways had to emerge fully operational, all at once. A stepwise evolutionary manner is not possible. Furthermore, knockout experiments of all components of the flagellum have shown that the flagellum is irreducibly complex.


Conclusion: Unless someone can falsify the prediction, and point out a non-intelligent source of  Information as found in the cell, the high levels of instructional complex coded information, irreducible complex and interdependent molecular systems and complex metabolic circuits and biosynthesis pathways, their origin is best explained by the action of an intelligent agent.

Many criticize that intelligent design is not science. But when ID is one of the possible mechanisms of origins, then we must be able to recognize and observe what constitutes an intelligently designed system - no matter if man made, or encountered in nature. And based on that, make hypotheses, test them, and get positive or negative conclusions.


To use design as a basis for scientific predictions is compatible with the scientific process because it does exactly what science is supposed to do. It puts our theories and hypotheses out in the open to be discussed, to be supported by accumulating evidence or refuted by the evidence. Some may object to this, but if we are seeking for truth, why should we not do it? Intelligent design theory seeks evidence of design in nature. Intelligent design starts with observation in the natural world and tries to find out, how the origin of given phenomenon can be best explained. Since there are basically two possible mechanisms, design, and natural, unguided, random events, both should be considered and evaluated against each other.




Objection: It's not the job of science to investigate the supernatural.
Answer: There are basically two possible mechanisms that explain the origin of the natural world. An intelligent designer, through power, information input, wisdom, will, or natural, non-guided, non-intelligent mechanisms, that is: random chance or physical necessity, long periods of time, mutation and natural selection, or self-organisation of matter.  Science is perfectly apt to find out if the natural world points to the requirement of intelligent action to set up the biological and biochemical systems we observe in nature. Intelligent Design theory does not pretend to explain how intelligence implemented the material world, nor who the designer is. That belongs to the realm of philosophic and theological inquiry. 


Objection: Suppose a probe to the planet Mars found evidence of artifacts there that could only have been produced by an intelligent civilization. Would you expect the scientists who made that discovery to say "Well, we're not going to try figure out who might have produced them. That belongs to the realm of philosophic and theological inquiry"?
Answer: Of course, in that case, science would try to figure out about this civilization. That would however still not explain the ultimate cause of a) this civilization, and b) the cause of the universe as a whole.


Objection: You really need to take the time to define who this supreme being is before you can assert it actually exists. 
Answer: No proponent of Intelligent design makes conclusive absolute assertions that an Intelligent Designer exists. One of the best solutions to handling the issue of evidence and arguments for God’s existence is to utilize what is called inference to the best explanation. The inference to the best explanation model takes into account the best available explanation in our whole range of experience and reflection. Since we as humans can’t observe God as a material object, one way to approach this issue is to look at the effects in the world and make rational inferences to the cause of the effect. Remember, the evidence is always evidence for (or against) something.  
http://reasonandscience.heavenforum.org/t2256-atheists-err-when-asking-for-material-evidence-to-prove-god-s-existence

In order to make design predictions, it must be established what can be recognized as design in nature - Something having the PROPERTIES that we might attribute to that of an intelligently designed system: 


( Following requirements which consist in an insurmountable problem for unguided naturalistic processes are met ) :


1) IRREDUCIBLY COMPLEX.  The requirement and existence of individual parts of a biological system which are indispensable to keep the basic function of a system,  which has no survival advantage or functional purpose by their own, nor in an intermediate evolutionary stage. ( biologically useful or significant genetic sequences )
2) The ability to find and recruit and select the right materials, and to form molecules with highly specific structures, which permit to form the aggregation into tissues, organs, and organ systems in a highly complex, functional, specified, correct, spatial order.
Making the individual parts and materials available at the same construction site, perhaps not simultaneously but certainly, at the time they are needed.
Coordinating and instruct the assembly of the parts in just the right way: even if all of the parts of a system are available at the right time, it is clear that the majority of ways of assembling them will be non-functional or irrelevant.
The parts must have the right size, form and material, and must be mutually compatible, that is, ‘well-matched’ and capable of properly ‘interacting’: even if subsystems or parts are put together in the right order, they also need to interface correctly. The individual parts will be held together and connected in the right manner through various different mechanisms, like fine tuned covalent and non-covalent bonds, electrostatic forces, cell junctions etc.
3) Establishment of communication systems. Most signal relay stations we know about were intelligently designed. Signal without recognition is meaningless.  Communication implies a signaling convention (a “coming together” or agreement in advance) that a given signal means or represents something: e.g., that S-O-S means “Send Help!”   The transmitter and receiver can be made of non-sentient materials, but the functional purpose of the system always comes from a mind.  The mind uses the material substances to perform an algorithm that is not itself a product of the materials or the blind forces acting on them.  Signal sequences may be composed of mindless matter, but they are marks of a mind behind the intelligent design.  Acts as an informational processing system ( the interaction of a software program and the hardware can only be setup all at once through intelligent input )
4) Selecting the most optimal and efficient genetic code and ability to minimize the effects of errors.
5) A system which uses a cipher, translating  instructions through one language  ( the universal genetic code) which contains Statistics, Syntax, Semantics, Pragmatics and Apobetics, and assign the right triplet code to the right amino acids
6) The appearance of highly complex dependencies thus giving the appearance of Implicit intelligence (although not intelligent itself, indicates an origin involving intelligence.. )
7  Use of molecular machinery on a scale and complexity which mankind has never IMAGINED possible - all with appearance of exact purpose, intent, function, and dependencies
8  exhibiting logical functional layers - regulatory genes controlling gene expression - conceptually the same as a logical software layer controlling the underlying system. 
9) another layer of complex 3 Dimensional control and access, and adaptation to environment: Epigenetics 
10) Implicit built in ERROR checking from the get go: reducing mutations to a minimal
11) Advanced inbuilt repair mechanisms which are essential for the proper function of certain biological systems and proteins right from the start.
12) Precise optimization and fine-tuning of biological, chemical, biochemical and physical systems.
13) Display the DESIGN of complex software, designed to adapt and EVOLVE in a very controlled and careful way - while at the same time minimizing mutations. A system designed to EVOLVE and SURVIVE. (gene splicing )
14) The ability to provide the precise instruction and coding for the development of biological systems. 
15) Something which as well as exhibiting all of the above, also has no conceptual way of coming into existence through naturalistic means, or something whose existence and origins appears to defy all known scientific understanding. Something which requires the application of a lot of FAITH and IMAGINATION of some theories to describe its origins through natural means alone.
16) So the application of COMMON SENSE and inference, from observations from the world around us (information processing systems) might indicate to us certain things having these above PROPERTIES, would fall into the category of things that have been DESIGNED.
17) One of the most intelligent concepts in the known universe is the concept of Evolution itself.


Proponents of evolution frequently argue that intelligent design is not science since it doesn't make predictions. Following a list of predictions made by intelligent design, and the confirmation:


Predictions in  biology: 
- High instructive coded information content will be found throughout the genome, in " junk DNA", and the epigenome– (already proven)
- The non-adequacy of the DNA-centric view to explain biodiversity.  Proven. We know that Membrane targets and patterns,  Cytoskeletal arrays, Centrosomes, Ion channels,  Sugar molecules on the exterior of cells (the sugar code), Gene regulatory networks, the Splicing Code,  the Metabolic Code, the Signal Transduction Codes,  the Signal Integration Codes,  the Histone Code,  the Tubulin Code the Sugar Code  and the Glycomic Code define morphology,  development, cell  and body shape. Basically, macroevolution ( the origin of morphological novelties ) is a falsified prediction, while ID is confirmed. 
- Machine-like irreducibly complex structures will be found – (already proven, and an undeniable fact.   Ken Millers  rebuttal is not a compelling refutation )
- Forms will be found in the fossil record that appears suddenly and without any precursors – ( well known)
- Genes and functional parts will be re-used in different unrelated organisms – ( proven)
- The genetic code will NOT contain much discarded genetic baggage code or functionless “junk DNA” – (being proven over & over today)
- Few or no intermediate forms will found giving a clear and gradual pathway from one family to another.  There are none so far.
- Mechanisms for error detection and correction will be abundant within the genome of all organisms – (already proven)
- Mechanisms for *non-random* adaptations, coherent with environmental pressures, will be found (already found)
- So called vestigial organs will be found to have specific purpose and usefulness – (already proven)
- Few mutations will end up being beneficial in the long run – (already proven)
- Genetic entropy will be found to cancel our most if any beneficial mutations


In astronomy/astrophysics
- an increase (and not a decrease), as science progresses, in the number of finely-tuned parameters pertinent to the laws and constants of physics


Predictions in Paleontology
- The observed pattern of the fossil record whereby morphological disparity precedes diversity.
- Saltational, or abrupt, the appearance of new life forms without transitional precursors.


Knock out experiments and tests provide empirical evidence that the flagellum is irreducibly complex, as Scott Minnich  testified at the Dover process: 


Kitzmiller Transcript of Testimony of Scott Minnich pgs. 99-108, Nov. 3, 2005, emphasis added
We have a mutation in a drive shaft protein or the U joint, and they can't swim. Now, to confirm that that's the only part that we've affected, you know, is that we can identify this mutation, clone the gene from the wild-type and reintroduce it by the mechanism of genetic complementation. So this is, these cells up here are derived from this mutant where we have complemented with a good copy of the gene. One mutation, one part knock out, it can't swim. Put that single gene back in we restore motility. Same thing over here. We put, knock out one part, put a good copy of the gene back in, and they can swim. By definition the system is irreducibly complex. We've done that with all 35 components of the flagellum, and we get the same effect.
(Kitzmiller Transcript of Testimony of Scott Minnich pgs. 99-108, Nov. 3, 2005, emphasis added)


High prescriptive information content will be found throughout the genome – (already proven)
Laws of chemistry and physics, which follow exact statistical, thermodynamic, and spatial laws, are totally inadequate for generating complex functional information or those systems that process that information using prescriptive algorithmic information". The organization requires control, which requires formalism as a reality. Each protein is currently the result of the execution of a real computer program running on the genetic operating system.

Machine-like irreducibly complex structures will be found – (already proven, and no K. Millers poor rebuttal is no refutation at all)
High information content machine-like irreducibly complex and interdependent structures,  of which photosynthesis, the eye, the human body, nitrogenase, the ribosome, the cell, rubisco, photosystem II, the oxygen-evolving complex etc. are prime examples, are commonly found in nature.
Since Evolution is unable to provide an advantage of adaptation in each evolutionary step and is unable to select it,  1) Darwinism’s prediction is falsified; 2) Design’s prediction is confirmed.


Forms will be found in the fossil record that appears suddenly and without any precursors – (already known)
Romer Alfred S. "The Procession of Life," The World Publishing Co: Cleveland OH, 1968, pp.19-20.
"A record of pre-Cambrian animal life, it appears, simply does not exist. Why this lamentable blank? Various theories have been proposed; none is too satisfactory. It has been suggested, for example, that all the Pre-Cambrian sediments were deposited on continental areas, and the absence of fossils in them is due to the fact that all the older animals were seadwellers. But that all these older sediments were continental is a theory which opposes, without proof, everything we know of deposition in later times. Again, it is suggested that the Pre-Cambrian seas were poor in calcium carbonate, necessary for the production of preservable skeletons; but this is not supported by geochemical evidence. Yet again, it is argued that even though conditions were amenable to the formation of fossilizable skeletal parts, the various phyla only began to use these possibilities at the dawn of the Cambrian. But it is, a priori, hard to believe that the varied types present in the early Cambrian would all have, so to speak, decided to put on armor simultaneously. And, once again, it has been argued that the whole evolution of multicellular animals took place with great rapidity in late Pre-Cambrian times, so that a relatively short gap in rock deposition would account for the absence of any record of their rise. Perhaps; but the known evolutionary rate in most groups from the Cambrian on is a relatively leisurely one, and it is hard to convince oneself that a sudden major burst of evolutionary advance would be so promptly followed by a marked 'slowdown'. All in all, there is no satisfactory answer to the Pre-Cambrian riddle."

Genes and functional parts will be re-used in different unrelated organisms – (already proven)
The argument of the highly similar DNA sequences 
1. If functionally unconstrained yet highly similar DNA sequences were found in different species, then evolution would be false.
2. In fact, the DNA sequences are extremely similar and even identical in different species.
3. There is currently “no known mechanism or function that would account for this level of conservation at the observed evolutionary distances.”
4. Since some of these sequences are found across a wide range of different species, the sequences, and whatever selective forces preserved them, must have been present very early in history.
5. On the other hand many of these sequences point to evolution’s nemesis, lineage-specific biology.
6. Highly similar DNA sequences in different species are a proof of the same intelligent designer using a similar genetic pattern to design different species. All men call him God.
7. God exists.


The insect eye and the vertebrate eye are two examples of structures said to be analogous ( Analogous structures are similar or resembling in certain respects, e.g. in function or in appearance but not in evolutionary origin or developmental origin. An example is wings of a butterfly and wings of a hummingbird are analogous.) . However, they can be shown to both be based on the expression of the Pax-6 gene , and it is probable that the vertebrate and insect (and cephalopod) eyes are the modified descendants of a basic metazoan photoreceptive cell that was regulated by Pax-6.

Research at the molecular level has failed to demonstrate the expected correspondence between gene product changes and the organismal changes predicted by evolution.
Evolution by DNA mutations 'is largely uncoupled from morphological evolution'

Some regulatory genes that have similar DNA sequences are found to regulate similar structures in different phyla where those structures are thought to have "evolved" independently. These homologous genes that regulate analogous structures might encourage the Darwinist to reconsider whether those structures might actually be homologous due to common ancestry. However, in consideration of the evidence that different phyla do not have common ancestors, these "homologies of process" are better explained as evidence of intelligent design, where the designer reused the same control mechanism for the development of similar structures in unrelated organisms.


The genetic code will NOT contain much discarded genetic baggage code or functionless “junk DNA” – (being proven over & over today)
Pennisi, Elizabeth. 7 September 2012. Science, Vol. 337, pp. 1159-1161.

When all sorts of peripheral genetic elements were discovered, evolutionary geneticists referred to them as “junk DNA” on the assumption that they were nothing but useless remnants left over from evolutionary predecessors. Come to find out, these regulatory elements are the key to cellular health and development, as well as the primary link to disease when not operating properly.
The massive store of apparently unused DNA components in every cell, which Richard Dawkins, incredibly, once dismissed as “99% junk”, now appears to hold multiple layers of subtle logic which are only beginning to be unraveled, with serious and long-lasting implications.

An article in the 7 September 2012 issue of Science was titled "ENCODE project writes a eulogy for junk DNA". "This week, 30 research papers... sound the death knell for the idea that our DNA is mostly littered with useless bases. A decade-long project, the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE), has found that 80% of the human genome serves some purpose". "The ENCODE effort has revealed that a gene's regulation is far more complex than previously thought, being influenced by multiple stretches of regulatory DNA located both near and far from the gene itself and by strands of RNA not translated into proteins, so-called noncoding RNA."--

During my time at Discovery Institute, we have also seen some of ID’s longstanding scientific predictions spectacularly fulfilled. Exhibit A: The ENCODE project’s discovery of widespread function for non-coding DNA. Again, since the late 1990s I’d been hearing ID-critics say “junk DNA refutes ID.” At that time, my rejoinder was “We haven’t even studied this ‘dark matter of the genome’ enough to know what it does. Let’s just wait and see.” Well, we’ve been waiting and now we’ve seen: ID was correct all along. Early indications of this mass-functionality first came to light in 2007 when ENCODE published its preliminary results suggesting that a great portion of our DNA is transcribed into RNA. But in 2012 ENCODE published its main results, showing that over 80 percent of the genome gives strong evidence of function. Papers uncovering specific functions for specific “junk” genetic elements continue to pour forth.

Few intermediate forms will found giving a clear and gradual pathway from one family to another – there are none so far.  Most of the claimed ancestors will be shown to have serious problems – already historically proven


Michael Denton:
“It is still, as it was in Darwin's day, overwhelmingly true that the first representatives of all the major classes of organisms known to biology are already highly characteristic of their class when they make their initial appearance in the fossil record. This phenomenon is particularly obvious in the case of the invertebrate fossil record. At its first appearance in the ancient paleozoic seas, invertebrate life was already divided into practically all the major groups with which we are familiar today


anthropologist Edmund Ronald Leach stated:
“ Missing links in the sequence of fossil evidence were a worry to Darwin. He felt sure they would eventually turn up, but they are still missing and seem likely to remain so


One of the most famous proponents of evolution was the late Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould. But Gould admitted,
"The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life’s history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection, we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study.

Mechanisms for error detection and correction will be abundant within the genome of all organisms – (already proven)


At least four excision repair pathways exist to repair single stranded DNA damage:

Nucleotide excision repair (NER)
Base excision repair (BER)
DNA mismatch repair (MMR)
Repair through alkyltransferase-like proteins (ATLs)

Natural selection cannot act without accurate replication, yet the protein machinery for the level of accuracy required is itself built by the very genetic code it is designed to protect.  Thats a catch22 situation.  It would have been challenging enough to explain accurate transcription and translation alone by natural means, but as consequence of UV radiation, it would have quickly been destroyed through the accumulation of errors.  So accurate replication and proofreading are required for the origin of life. How on earth could proofreading enzymes emerge, especially with this degree of fidelity, when they depend on the very information that they are designed to protect?  Think about it.... This is one more prima facie example of chicken and egg situation. What is the alternative explanation to design? Proofreading  DNA by chance?  And a complex suite of translation machinery without a designer?


Mechanisms for *non-random* adaptations, coherent with environmental pressures, will be found (already found)
The genome has traditionally been treated as a Read-Only Memory (ROM) subject to change by copying errors and accidents. In this review, I propose that we need to change that perspective and understand the genome as an intricately formatted Read-Write (RW) data storage system constantly subject to cellular modifications and inscriptions. Cells operate under changing conditions and are continually modifying themselves by genome inscriptions. These inscriptions occur over three distinct time-scales (cell reproduction, multicellular development and evolutionary change) and involve a variety of different processes at each time scale (forming nucleoprotein complexes, epigenetic formatting and changes in DNA sequence structure). Research dating back to the 1930s has shown that genetic change is the result of cell-mediated processes, not simply accidents or damage to the DNA. This cell-active view of genome change applies to all scales of DNA sequence variation, from point mutations to large-scale genome rearrangements and whole genome duplications (WGDs). This conceptual change to active cell inscriptions controlling RW genome functions has profound implications for all areas of the life sciences.

So-called vestigial organs will be found to have specific purpose and usefulness – (already proven)
Darwin argued in The Origin of Species that the widespread occurrence of vestigial organs -- organs that may have once had a function but are now useless -- is evidence against creation. "On the view of each organism with all its separate parts having been specially created, how utterly inexplicable is it that organs bearing the plain stamp of inutility... should so frequently occur." But such organs, he argued, are readily explained by his theory: "On the view of descent with modification, we may conclude that the existence of organs in a rudimentary, imperfect, and useless condition, or quite aborted, far from presenting a strange difficulty, as they assuredly do on the old doctrine of creation, might even have been anticipated in accordance with the views here explained."


Many of the organs that are claimed to be useless actually do have a use. Granted, many of these uses were not identified for a long time, which led to the misnomer that they were functionless. This leaves me skeptical of other and future accusations for useless organs whether on humans or other animals. As Mention points out, “The problem with declaring any organ to be without function is discriminating between truly functionless organs and those that have functions that are simply unknown. Indeed, over the years nearly all organs once thought to be useless have been found to be functional. When we have no evidence for function of an organ, we need to bear in mind that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,” (Menton, 231).

Few mutations will end up being beneficial in the long run – (already proven)
Proponents of evolution maintain there must have been “beneficial” mutations on occasion to allow uphill drift of genetic information. Although there are small handfuls of mutations which make it easier for an organism to survive in an extreme environment, so by definition are “equivocally ” beneficial, none are “unequivocally ” beneficial or “uphill” in the sense of adding new genetic information to the gene pool.

Genetic entropy will be found to cancel our most if any beneficial mutations
Ratio of beneficial vs. detrimental mutations:
There are numerous published estimates ranging from 1/1000 to 1/1,000,000. A 1998 paper published in Genetica suggests a beneficial mutation rate (vs. the total mutation rate) of approximately 1 in 1,000,000 (Gerrish and Lenski, 1998). Given that a significant portion if not most of the human genome is functional to one degree or another, to a similar degree those mutations that are not beneficial would be functionally detrimental to one degree or another. In short, the ratio of beneficial vs. detrimental is very small - most likely well below the ratio of 1/1000.