Atheism and Agnosticism — Question of Beginnings

One of the oldest (and most common) questions of life is “how did I get here?” You’ve got several choices to choose from.

  1. Evolution — first there was nothing, and then it exploded. Then goo formed, then amino acids, then life, then through mutations became what we see today.
  2. God — an eternal being created the cosmos.
  3. Aliens placed us here 10 minutes ago with all memories intact (we’ve heard that before, seriously).
  4. We’re in the Matrix.

Evolution makes many assumptions about what may or may not have happened billions of years ago (“first there was nothing, and then it exploded”), simply because they’re required for evolution to occur. But that’s not science. The scientific method involves repeatable, experimental data. If you don’t have that, it’s not science — by definition. So where is the experimental evidence for the following? If you don’t have repeatable, verifiable experimental data for it it’s not science, and you can’t answer the question (via science) of how did I get here?

  1. Matter comes from nothing.
  2. Non-living material can spontaneously become alive.
  3. Species can change from one to another.
  4. Explosions produce order.

Evolution doesn’t work — even Dawkins admits a god exists. If you believe “from the goo to the zoo to you” you need repeatable, scientific experiments for it. If you don’t have that, you accept evolution on faith, not science.

The fact that life evolved out of nearly nothing, some 10 billion years after the universe evolved literally out of nothing—is a fact so staggering that I would be mad to attempt words to do it justice. — Richard Dawkins “The Ancestor’s Tale” page 613

Dawkins states how the universe came into existence is evolution. And his theory about evolution is “first there was nothing, and then it exploded” followed by the goo … to the zoo … to you! All without experimental data to support it. Where are the experiments showing matter comes from nothing? For non-life becoming life? Of course, that’s not the only problem Dawkins and his disciples need to answer:

Nevertheless, it may be that the origin of life is not the only major gap in the evolutionary story that is bridged by sheer luck, anthropically justified. — Richard Dawkins “The God Delusion” page 140

Where’s the science? By Dawkins’ own admission, he’s postulated a lucky theory-of-the-gaps, where he has a start and end point, and in the middle only exists “poof—some magic happened” — completely without any scientific experimental evidence or observation in the lab. Where are the experiments proving life comes from non-life, or matter comes from nothing? Dawkins takes evolution on faith, not science.

Some say evolution doesn’t involve these questions concerning the beginning of the cosmos and matter itself (even though Dawkins disagrees), but we still need to answer the question: how did I get here? If you want to ignore the foundation and start on the 13th floor, fine. Where are the experiments showing massive quantities of mutations create new species? This gets to be an argument over what a species is, but for the bit we’ll gloss over that issue to focus on another problem — lack of information.

Filed Under: Atheism

Recommended Citation:
Yeager, Darrin "Atheism and Agnosticism — Question of Beginnings" (2023-11-23 14:45),
https://www.dyeager.org/post/atheism-agnosticism-series-part6-beginnings.html
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