Wortfish wrote:
Dawkins has always downplayed the origin of life. In the interview, he clearly lumped the origin with the diversity of life: DARWINISM EXPLAINS LIFE, PERIOD

Creationists don't bother to argue how divine creation of a visible universe with a hundred billion galaxies each consisting of hundreds of billions of stars was necessary to produce life on one measly planet, this one.

Creationist theism is only useful for entertaining the narcissistic question: "What possible purpose could the universe have without us?" Anyone who wants to feel flattered will think of life as being inexplicable without resort to supernaturalism.

Life is either common throughout the visible universe, or special creation is special pleading.

Creationists don't bother to argue how divine creation of a visible universe with a hundred billion galaxies each consisting of hundreds of billions of stars was necessary to produce life on one measly planet, this one.

One plausible explanation is that this solar system is the cot that god plays in, and life is his latest toy. The rest of the universe is explained by his famous tantrums, which stopped somewhere around the year 0ALT (after last tantrum). This also conveniently explains the expanding universe.

zulumoose wrote:

Creationists don't bother to argue how divine creation of a visible universe with a hundred billion galaxies each consisting of hundreds of billions of stars was necessary to produce life on one measly planet, this one.

One plausible explanation is that this solar system is the cot that god plays in, and life is his latest toy. The rest of the universe is explained by his famous tantrums, which stopped somewhere around the year 0ALT (after last tantrum). This also conveniently explains the expanding universe.

That's a good attempt at imagining a theist's metaphor-riddled response to my question. The proposed rationalization is full of problems; for example, why does god need a 'cot' to play in, with 'toys'? This is definitely an anthropomorphic god, isn't it? The point is, the theist does not offer the rationale until you ask the question. See the pattern, there?

It forces the depressing view that humans are simply incapable of making characterizations of gods that are not obvious fabrications, leaving the only possibilities some skeptics won't dismiss out of hand as black swans no one has ever described, let alone observed. This is no less disingenuous than the crap we get from theists. See what aban has to say about all that:

aban57 wrote:

Cito di Pense wrote:
But why the fuck would you call some unspecified entity a 'deity'?

I won't, theists will. Can't you get that in your fucking head ?

aban57 wrote:some entity could exist without us being aware of it right now, and interact with us in ways we can't imagine today.

Really, we should try to imagine the interactions that would lead anyone to call it a deity, because that is how deities are defined. Sadly for the above speculations, the definition is going to have to come from the Department of Tautology Department, or someplace smellier.

However, if we won't call it a deity, and theists won't call it a deity, who's going to call it a deity? I think I understand the point, though: As long as it's just a speculation, someone can call it a deity, even if we won't.

The real tragedy is that the following is not obviously a less-effective way of dealing with theists than my question:

felltoearth wrote:
You are being disingenuous, or you are a moron. Take your pick

The default position should be that there will always be phenomena that cannot be understood but that nothing comes
under the descriptors of metaphysical or supernatural. The observable Universe is mystifying enough without having to
add imaginary unfalsifiable concepts known as God in all of his or her or its various manifestations into the mix as well

What's the default position? Is it that there isn't anything supernatural or that there will always be stuff that isn't fully-understood? I beg to differ with you if you're saying these two points have anything to do with one another. It's the woo-heads who invert it and say "Because there is stuff that isn't well-understood, we must allow for the supernatural as a possibility". That isn't an argument, because the conclusion doesn't follow from the premise.

I appreciate that it's easier to tear down a crummy argument than it is to make a good one of your own. Here you have failed to form an argument, and are only getting yourself mixed up by the inversion of a bad argument. That inversion is: "Even though there is stuff that is not well-understood, we need not allow for the supernatural." To turn that into an argument, explain why you can't just omit what looks like the premise there, and say, "We need not allow for the supernatural full stop," which is what I've been saying for awhile, now. It was the goat-roasters who admitted the supernatural because they were scared shitless by all the stuff they didn't understand.

Non falsifiable concepts cannot be investigated and should be treated as if they dont actually exist. The supernatural is an entirely imaginary category which has no place in science. So that only leaves two categories : the known and the unknown
Over time unknowns become known and unknown knowns become known unknowns. Now this is an eternal work in progress But advances in technology coupled with the brutal rigour of the scientific method add to the canon of scientific knowledge

We can discard argument completely because science is empirical not philosophical and God Of The Gaps is a logical fallacy
God is a matter for ontology which has absolutely nothing to do with science. Science doesnt investigate reality in any way only observable phenomena. It has nothing to say about it from an ontological perspective. The supernatural is an entirely imaginary non scientific concept. If it actually existed it wouldnt be supernatural. Supernatural existence is an oxymoron