Forum Overview :: Biohazard: Code Veronica :: Senor Barborito MetaFilter Post

[quote name="Senor Barborito MetaFilter Post"]I don't think you should be rejected out of hand. Prior to becoming an atheist I viewed the theory of evolution much as you do. I became an atheist because I felt that the Biblical onotology and epistemology were both wildly fallacious - which is to say that my reasons were philosophical, not geological. That being said, I no longer believe that creationism nor intelligent design accurately describe the means by which men were created. The most important piece of knowledge I can convey to you is that the scientific method demands that each branch of knowledge never be complete. The more we observe the universe, the more accurate our theories describing it will become. It may be possible for our model of the universe to correspond with the state of the universe to within 99.999% or greater accuracy, but a full 100% accuracy is impossible without creating another, larger universe with which to describe the one in which we live. The second most important piece of knowledge I can convey to you is the existence of the principle of emergent complexity, of which you may be unaware. I encourage you to at least gloss over the topic by reading wikipedia's entry on it. Ponder how this could apply to biological organisms, how it might provide an answer more complex and fulfilling than ". . . and MUTATIONS," and perhaps you will begin to fill in a major missing piece in your puzzle. The third and final piece of knowledge is how life can possibly form out of basically inorganic molecules. Even within the multitude of soups of goo stewn about primordial Earth, it seems to require a leap of faith to believe that somehow the simplest of cells could form from them (it seems logical that virii and prions, simpler organisms than cells, only arose as parasites once complex organisms were already well-established). I had some notion of how it might be done via protein chains and the above emergent complexity, but even so that seemed a fairly weak explanation on which to base the existence of all life. I think that once you consider those two points, and take into account the principle of emergent complexity, you may arrive at a more satisfactory explanation as to how life might have arisen from seemingly nothing. posted by Ryvar at 8:40 PM PST on March 25 [/quote]