Evidence and the Burden of Proof

[Don McIntosh]

Ever since Antony Flew introduced the concept of "presumption of atheism," it has become a more or less accepted rule of Christian-atheist debates (like the ones that take place here) that the Christian bears the burden of proof. On the definition of atheism as a mere "lack of belief," this seems fair enough: the burden of proof lies "on the proposition, not the opposition." Flew himself was careful to point out that this should be a procedural rather than substantive principle, so that when properly applied in a debate, the presumption of atheism presupposes nothing about the strength or weakness of the Christian position.

To my knowledge, however, Flew never mentioned what should happen to the burden of proof once a Christian undertakes to not only accept that burden but to meet it (or claim to meet it) by providing various forms of evidence. It seems to me that once evidence is brought in for examination, the burden of proof shifts. An atheist at that point can no longer claim to simply lack belief because there is "no evidence." To rationally maintain lack of belief (or continue to assert irrationality of belief), good arguments have to be made against the evidence that has been provided.

I take it that evidence confirming Christian theism includes:

1. Cosmological evidence suggesting an absolute beginning (of both space and time) of the universe.
2. The apparent fine-tuning of life-permitting physical constants regulating the universe.
3. Numerous instances of specified complexity (or "functional complexity" or "irreducible complexity") in nature.
4. General human awareness of transcendent or "objective" moral rules.
5. The historical origin, worldwide dispersion and persecution, and subsequent physical restoration of the nation of Israel, in keeping with the prophetic message of the Old Testament
6. The miraculous ministry of Jesus Christ, historically attested in thousands of early manuscripts, derived from originals dated to within a generation of his death and purported resurrection.
7. The birth of the early church, in Jerusalem, on the preaching of the resurrection, and in the face of violent persecution.
8. The remarkably sudden, complete conversion of Saul of Tarsus, formerly a leader in the earliest efforts to destroy the Christian movement.

It should be noted further that by "evidence," I mean the stuff of inductive inferences: objective data that increase the probability of a belief or proposition being true. I do not mean a sound deductive proof (though such a proof would amount to extremely strong evidence that Christian theism is true!).

Questions for debate: When Christians are challenged to provide evidence for their beliefs, and in response they freely provide various forms of evidence, do they still bear the sole burden of proof in the debate? Or do skeptics rather take on a burden of proof of their own, to show that the evidence provided is not "really" evidence, or for some reason is not admissible, not strong enough to warrant serious consideration, etc.?

[Divine Insight]

3. Numerous instances of specified complexity (or "functional complexity" or "irreducible complexity") in nature.

No one has ever shown that anything in nature is irreducibly complex. If you can show that you could easily win a Nobel Prize and then you've have a compelling argument. Until that happens this isn't evidence. It's nothing more than a "God of the Gaps" argument.

A design involves specifying elements in a certain arrangement or order to achieve a particular function. There are a host of highly complex biological structures whose particular functions are entirely dependent on their being arranged in a certain way, to the point that removal of one of the parts in the arrangement disables the function completely. (That's what "irreducible" means; it doesn't mean "could not possibly have evolved" or "could not have had some other function in the past.") Because design is a very good explanation for an arrangement upon which a specifiable function depends entirely, such an arrangement is evidence of design.

Every inference is an attempt to rationally fill the gaps between observation and explanation. An inference from specifiable complexity to design by God is no different on that score.

But if evolution can account for it (as you have agreed to above) then there's no need to postulate a designer. The process of evolution itself is the "designer" and it's being driven by the environment in which it takes place.

There's simply no need to invoke the idea of a supernatural designer. The natural process of evolution already has this covered.

And by the way, let's not ignore the fact that a "God" who uses natural evolution as his design mechanism is NOT compatible with Christian theology.

So if evolution that results in complex forms implies a "Designer", then that designer would have needed to have designed the universe initially with all the proper "fine-tuning" to allow evolution to produce these complex forms.

That's not compatible with the Biblical Narrative, or a jealous intervening God who often reaches into the universe to create global floods, talking donkeys, or turning women into pillars of salt.

If we want to make a theological argument based on evolution we'd need to turn to Deism (true deism where the God does not intervene at all), or Taoism, or Pantheism, or even Buddhism which is a from of Pantheism.

But we could then toss out any jealous-God monotheism at that point.

So this argument wouldn't support Christianity anyway.

[Divine Insight]

4. General human awareness of transcendent or "objective" moral rules.

This is easy to debunk. It a proven false claim. Not all humans agree on what moral rules should be. Therefore it's a false claim to say that there is a general human awareness of "objective" moral rules.

Understand that there is no contradiction between "general" and "not all." There's a reason I said "general human awareness" and not "universal human awareness." Moreover, humans may have awareness of there being transcendent or objective moral rules and still disagree on what exactly they are and how they should be applied.

What do you mean by "Moreover, humans may have awareness of there being transcendent or objective moral rules"?

This seems like semantic trickery here. You're trying to apply that humans are "aware" of some sort of objective "truth" when in fact, all they are doing is taking a guess at something and perhaps feeling emotionally committed to their position.

There is absolutely no good reason why anyone should think that there are any objective moral rules at work in our world. There is absolutely nothing you could point to that would even suggest that such a thing exists.

Even people who passionately feel this way disagree among themselves on what those moral rules should be. So clearly even they can't point to anything to settle their obviously subjective difference of opinion.

The only possible thing to point to would be a purely secular definition of morality based on what appears to logically make sense for the heath and happiness of humans. But even that becomes highly subjective because not everyone will agree on what they deem to be logically healthy or happy.

So it seems to me the idea of any absolute morality is a lost concept with no hope of ever being resurrected.

Moreover, you certainly can't be arguing for Christianity when you try to argue for objective morality, the morality of the God portrayed in the Bible isn't even carved in stone. He changes his ideas of what should be considered to be moral all the time. And in Christianity this is especially true. Jesus tosses out the immoral directives and commandment of the original God and replaces them with his own moral values.

So Christianity, as a theology, can't lay claim to having any objective moral rules.

Consider two college students arguing about how to interpret the First Amendment. Does their dispute mean that the founding fathers are mythical beings?

It doesn't need to. All it needs to mean is that the founding fathers were also just voicing personal subjective opinions. And apparently both the students who are arguing over this agree, at least on the subjective nature of the original rules. Otherwise they wouldn't be arguing over them.

I don't know why you would use this example anyway. Do you think the founding fathers of the USA have written down objective rules that cannot be challenged?

The fact that we might argue over the validity of those rules today shows that we recognize that even those rules are subjective opinions and open to reevaluation and reconsideration.

In fact, I have to ask you what you would do today if Christ never existed and all you had to do by was the Old Testament. Would you still be as passionate about supporting those rules as the basis for an absolute authoritarian theocracy?

I would hope not. And if that's true, then apparently even you disagree with the original God of the theology you are trying to excuse. If it weren't for Jesus could you truly support Yahweh for King? A theocratic dictator who has you stoning sinners to death on his behalf?

There was no turning the other cheek back then. The rule back then was an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Something that Jesus ironically rebuked directly.

A world run by Yahweh would be more like a world run by the Taliban or ISIS.

Is that what you support? Objective morality that never changes?

Can't have Jesus. Jesus violates the "Objective Morality Theory".

[Divine Insight]

But I appreciate your taking the time and trouble to answer my post.

I'm glad that my time hasn't been wasted.


But I fully understand why others are getting tired of rebutting these "Same Old Arguments" over and over and over again.

There is absolutely nothing you have offered that hasn't already been thoroughly addressed and previously debunked a gazillion times over.

It's the same old terribly flawed apologies for a theology that should have been given a proper funeral centuries ago. That fact that people are still trying to make excuses for this horrible theology is a testament to how stubborn humans can truly be.

Even truth cannot sway them from their passion to defend this indefensible religion.

And I truly believe that main reason for this is because they have been convinced that it's "ALL OR NOTHING".

In other words, Christians have come to believe that either Christianity is true, or there is no God.

Muslims have come to believe that either Islam is true or there is no God.

Jews have come to believe that either their Jealous-YHVH is God or there is no God.

And none of them can handle the thought of a secular godless reality, so they cling to their respective theologies for dear LIFE. Anything else means certain DEATH.

So it's understandable that they see this as a life versus death crusade.

Sadly it's not true. There are many other philosophies of potential spiritual or mystical supernatural realities. Clinging to these specific ancient cultural myths is totally unnecessary. But let's face it, in the Abrahamic religions they have been told that to reject their God results in certain damnation.

So the fear factor is understandable as well.

That's what keeps these ancient immoral religions alive today.

Sad but true.

[Don McIntosh]

at the same time that it's evidence against scientific naturalism and every other worldview on which an absolute beginning of the universe would not be expected.

Again, this is a misrepresentation on your part. Science has never said that the Big Bang was the "absolute beginning of the universe". It was simply the event that became the universe as we currently know it. In fact, I can't even think of a scientific hypothesis that doesn't include ideas of how the Big Bang came to be. The most popular current idea (insofar as I am aware) is that our universe began as a quantum fluctuation in a preexisting quantum field. So according to that hypothesis the Big Bang does not represent an absolute beginning. Other scientific hypothesis include many other ideas, from "branes" colliding with each other in M-theory, to a single universe that continually bounces off itself eternally. In fact, there are no scientific hypotheses that I am aware of that claim that the universe began from nothing at all.

So it's a misrepresentation on your part to claim that scientific naturalists need to work with a universe that had an "absolute beginning". That's simply not true.

Keep in mind that we're talking about evidence. I did not say that scientific naturalists "need to work with" a temporally finite universe, only that they recognize evidence pointing in that direction. (Now right here I should say something about you always misrepresenting me...but I won't. )

In other words there is evidence strongly suggesting an absolute beginning of the universe, evidence which cosmologists like Hawking have freely acknowledged in their work on the standard big bang model over the last four decades. Even if the standard model is problematic (because it invokes "infinite density," for instance), it seems difficult to circumvent a beginning of time along with space.

Thus Mithani and Vilenkin: 'There are...three popular scenarios which circumvent these theorems: eternal inflation, a cyclic universe, and an “emergent� universe which exists for eternity as a static seed before expanding. Here we shall argue that none of these scenarios can actually be past-eternal.'
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1204.4658.pdf

Are cosmologists completely satisfied with the notion of "an absolute beginning" in scientific terms? Of course not. An absolute beginning would imply that the universe actually has no scientific explanation, that it "simply popped into existence" as W.L. Craig is fond of saying. And that in turn would suggest the activity of God for anyone not already disinclined toward theism. So they quite understandably have constructed theories like fluctuations in a quantum vacuum or M-theory, in an effort to find a fully scientific explanation. But while there remains considerable evidence supporting an absolute beginning, there is considerable evidence against eternal or everlasting models such as those invoking the quantum vacuum, branes, etc. That evidential disparity may well be because, again, the true explanation is that God created the universe.

[Don McIntosh]

A design involves specifying elements in a certain arrangement or order to achieve a particular function. There are a host of highly complex biological structures whose particular functions are entirely dependent on their being arranged in a certain way, to the point that removal of one of the parts in the arrangement disables the function completely. (That's what "irreducible" means; it doesn't mean "could not possibly have evolved" or "could not have had some other function in the past.") Because design is a very good explanation for an arrangement upon which a specifiable function depends entirely, such an arrangement is evidence of design.

Every inference is an attempt to rationally fill the gaps between observation and explanation. An inference from specifiable complexity to design by God is no different on that score.

But if evolution can account for it (as you have agreed to above) then there's no need to postulate a designer. The process of evolution itself is the "designer" and it's being driven by the environment in which it takes place.

There's simply no need to invoke the idea of a supernatural designer. The natural process of evolution already has this covered.

I never agreed that evolution can account for irreducible complexity. For clarity's sake I suggested that irreducible complexity would not be strictly impossible given evolution (which is what lots of people assume is meant by "irreducible complexity"). Would you agree that there's at least a potential distinction to be drawn between a poor explanation lacking explanatory power and a sheer impossibility?

Evolution does not explain irreducible complexity, however (or at least doesn't explain it very well), because it would mean that each individual part or subsystem of an irreducibly complex system gradually evolved independently of the others in response to a certain set of environmental pressures, whereas the system as a whole also gradually evolved in response to the same set of environmental pressures. (Remember: an irreducibly complex system is defined by its function, which is dependent on all the parts being already in place.) In other words the resulting complex function, of eyesight, or blood clotting, etc., is a simple coincidence. But coincidence is not an explanation (or at least it's not a very good explanation).

A supernatural or extra-dimensional designer, on the other hand, adequately explains why all the parts of a complex system would come together in just such a way that a highly useful (even survival-dependent) and easily identifiable function would result.

[Divine Insight]

Before I begin to address your speculative suggestions, let me point out that StuartJ and Rikuo already addressed your thread topic. The burden of proof is entirely upon you to support your claims.

You are claiming that various things supposedly lead to the unavoidable conclusion that there needs to be a designer behind the universe. But nothing you have provided thus far is evidence for this. So the burden of proof is on you.

On the other hand there is no burden of proof on those who simply reject your assertions. They aren't making an specific claims actually. All they are doing is demonstrating why you don't really have any evidence for the conclusions you claim must be obtained. So they don't need to prove anything. All they need to do is show why your conclusions are not reasonable.

And your following explanation concerning "irreducible systems" fails to provide any evidence for the conclusions you are making.

I never agreed that evolution can account for irreducible complexity. For clarity's sake I suggested that irreducible complexity would not be strictly impossible given evolution (which is what lots of people assume is meant by "irreducible complexity"). Would you agree that there's at least a potential distinction to be drawn between a poor explanation lacking explanatory power and a sheer impossibility?

Yes I would agree that there is a distinction between a poor explanation lacking explanatory power and a sheer impossibility. However, I do not agree that evolution is a poor explanation lacking explanatory power.

So apparently we differ on that point. Therefore the burden of proof is on you if you want to demand otherwise. I don't need to prove my position because your claim is without evidence and a claim that can be made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. You haven't shown the evolution is a "poor explanation". I've studied evolution and as far as I'm concerned it's an "excellent explanation".

So if you want to demand that it's a poor explanation then the burden of proving that is on you. And recognize that the entire scientific community is in agreement with me. So it's not like I'm making a claim that isn't well understood by thousands of scientists.

You are the one who is making the unorthodox claim that isn't supported by the scientific community.

Evolution does not explain irreducible complexity, however (or at least doesn't explain it very well), because it would mean that each individual part or subsystem of an irreducibly complex system gradually evolved independently of the others in response to a certain set of environmental pressures, whereas the system as a whole also gradually evolved in response to the same set of environmental pressures.

All I see here is a gross ignorance of the evidence for evolution. It's not like a human eyeball just popped into existence one day by random chance. It evolved over millions of years. And so there was never a time when each individual part of the subsystem needed to gradually evolve independently of the eye as a whole. The whole eyeball began as a very crude eye-spot and slowly evolved to become the finial product we see today.

So your assumption that all the individual parts of a complex highly evolved eyeball had to evolve independently is simply wrong. That suggestion represents a failure of Evolution 101.

You clearly just don't understand how evolution actually works.

So in this case you're just plain dead wrong.

(Remember: an irreducibly complex system is defined by its function, which is dependent on all the parts being already in place.) In other words the resulting complex function, of eyesight, or blood clotting, etc., is a simple coincidence. But coincidence is not an explanation (or at least it's not a very good explanation).

Well, for one thing these highly evolved systems are not truly "irreducible" to begin with. That's just an arbitrary definition that a Creationist can place onto a highly evolved system. But it hasn't been shown to be irreducible in terms of evolution. It's only "irreducible" if you demand that it popped into finished form from nothing.

But that's not how evolution works. Nothing complex just "pops" into existence out of the blue.

And because you have it all wrong, you conclude that things must have happened due to extremely unlikely coincidences. But that's not the case at all.

So you are jumping to all manner of wrong conclusions based on an incorrect understanding of how things actually evolve. No complex systems just pop into existence out of the blue in evolution. In fact, if they did that would indeed blow evolution clean out of the water. No question about that.

A supernatural or extra-dimensional designer, on the other hand, adequately explains why all the parts of a complex system would come together in just such a way that a highly useful (even survival-dependent) and easily identifiable function would result.

But you are already jumping to this conclusion based on a grossly flawed idea of how evolution works.

Therefore your conclusion is unjustified.

Moreover, an unexplained supernatural designer is no explanation for anything.

You may as well be saying the boogieman did it.

I mean seriously. You jump to grossly false conclusions about evolution, and from there you jump to proposing an non-explanatory boogieman as the answer.

Until you can explain where this highly complex designing boogieman came from, you don't have an explanation for anything.

You aren't in any better shape than scientific naturalists who can't yet explain how the universe got started.

The only BIG DIFFERENCE is that the scientists openly confess that they don't yet have an explanation.

You, on the other hand, are claiming to have an explanation. And what's your explanation?

An Invisible Non-Detectable Unexplained Boogieman Did It!

So now let's ask WHO HAS THE BURDEN OF PROOF HERE?

The scientists who are openly confessing that they don't yet have the answer?

Or the theists who are claiming that an unexplained invisible boogieman is the explanation?

If you can't see why the theists are the only ones who are being asked to prove their claims then I just don't know what more can be said.

The scientists aren't making any claims that they can't support.

And most atheists aren't claiming there is no God. They are simply pointing out the obvious truth that there currently isn't any compelling reason to think that a God exists.

After all if an unexplained God can be considered a viable explanation for itself, then an unexplained universe should be considered to be a viable explanation for itself as well.

Adding an unexplained God into the mix hasn't solved anything. You're just as far away from knowing anything as you were before you proposed the unexplained God.

May as well call it a "boogieman", calling it a "God" doesn't change anything.

An unexplained entity is an unexplained entity no matter what label you try to paste onto it.

[StuartJ]

[Replying to post 16 by Divine Insight]

If you can't see why the theists aren't the only ones who are being asked to prove their claims then I just don't know what more can be said.

The scientists aren't making any claims that they can't support.

And most atheists aren't claiming there is no God. They are simply pointing out the obvious truth that there currently isn't any compelling reason to think that a God exists.

My Hat of Profound Explanation is telling me that persons of faith are trapped - because of their faith - into not acknowledging that what you have said is correct.

Or, perhaps, that you said it so well

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 5 by Don McIntosh]

A large set of extremely precise (in terms of statistical significance) life-permitting physical constants, on the other hand, would still count as fine-tuning, or evidence of fine-tuning, and fine-tuning (for most observers) still counts as evidence favoring theism.

It's the "fine" I'm having problems with.

Let's say I'm an architect, and I say to you, I'm a genius at building habitable homes, wonderful homes for families. I say to you I've got a plot of of land that is currently uninhabitable by humans (as in, if you live there, you'll die) and that I can turn it into comfortable homes for humans.
At the end of the day, I come back to you, tell you to look at what I've built, only I've done a your God. One house out of the thousand I've built is actually able to be lived in by humans. All 999 other homes will kill you should you stay in them.
The majority of this planet is inimical to human life. Try walking into the ocean. You can't live there.
If you're still talking about life in general, you've still got the problem of the vast majority of this universe being (at present) hostile to life. We haven't discovered life anywhere else.

As for the vast stretches of uninhabitable space that constitutes most of the observable universe, think of it like this: There is only one observable universe. Even if there exists an infinity of external universes they are unobservable in principle. That being the case, we have no reference class or sample space against which to actually measure the logical or theoretical probability of fine-tuning.

Then why do you argue in favour of it? You've just admitted you can't do it, yet here you are...?

the more improbable the flourishing of life appears to be apart from the deliberate design work of some external agent.

Apparently you haven't heard of the Law of Large Numbers. I can't remember who said it, but I did hear a while back something along the lines of "Have tries in the billions, and even that thing that is normally only one in a thousand will become commonplace"
In other words, if we, for the sake of argument, say that only one in one million galaxies will have a star capable of supporting life, and only one in one million stars will have planets capable of supporting life, and only one in one million planets capable of supporting life will have life...then we have millions of planets with life (and that's just if we think in terms of life like on our own planet) throughout the universe.
It's like you're on a beach, seeing a peculiar shaped rock, and wondering at the shape of it, and thinking it MUST have been shaped by a fine tuner, and all without either bothering or being able to look at all the other rocks around you.

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 14 by Don McIntosh]

In other words there is evidence strongly suggesting an absolute beginning of the universe, evidence which cosmologists like Hawking have freely acknowledged in their work on the standard big bang model over the last four decades.

Does your model, the one you think is true, have some sort of event, a creation to use that word, happening "before" this absolute beginning of the universe? Is there a "before" the BB, before the universe?

An absolute beginning would imply that the universe actually has no scientific explanation, that it "simply popped into existence" as W.L. Craig is fond of saying. And that in turn would suggest the activity of God for anyone not already disinclined toward theism.

Even if that, what is the evidence for a "popper"? That this "popper" is God?

That evidential disparity may well be because, again, the true explanation is that God created the universe.

I can predict, with 100% certainty (and I know, I argued against this in a different thread) that science journals, on this topic, don't just say "God-did-it".
You seem to already have an explanation, but unlike scientists who spend years and decades and much effort looking at math (which you have touched on here, but not presented any, and yes, I recognise neither have I), but don't insert "God-did-it" into their equations.
Where is the "God-did-it" model? I mean the actual scientific model, using mathematics like all the other models proposed by scientists, that has "God-did-it" in the equation?

[Don McIntosh]

The burden of proof is entirely upon you to support your claims.

The burden of proof is on me only until my opponent appeals to an opposing belief, which of course you do below with your appeal to evolution.

You are claiming that various things supposedly lead to the unavoidable conclusion that there needs to be a designer behind the universe. But nothing you have provided thus far is evidence for this. So the burden of proof is on you.

I don't recall saying anything about an "unavoidable conclusion." I said, and maintain, that design appears to be a better explanation than evolution for certain biological systems. The evidence provided is the irreducible complexity of those systems, i.e., systems in which a specifiable function depends on a particular arrangement of a large number of parts and in which removal of one of the parts disables the function.

Design (as in engineering or industrial design) almost always involves the intentional, particular arrangement of a minimal number of critical elements or parts that makes possible a specifiable function. By that understanding the timekeeping function of a wristwatch or the propulsion function of a jet engine is evidence of design, as is the function of a mammalian eye or a bacterial flagellum.

Evolution by contrast explains gradual modification of singular features of organisms, not the collective and simultaneous organization of complex systems. Precisely because the function in question depends on all the parts being in place simultaneously, on evolution an irreducibly, functionally complex biological system is essentially a giant coincidence. Unless you want to say that evolution entails mind-boggling coincidences, it's really not evidence for evolution in the least.

That's how evidence works; a belief (or hypothesis, etc.) is rendered to some degree more probable when it predicts or entails facts that would not otherwise be expected. But simply and repeatedly asserting that I have not provided any evidence for my belief is just lazy denialism. Why isn't it evidence? Do you have a different definition of evidence, by which a set of facts does not make a belief more probable?

Yes I would agree that there is a distinction between a poor explanation lacking explanatory power and a sheer impossibility. However, I do not agree that evolution is a poor explanation lacking explanatory power.

So apparently we differ on that point. Therefore the burden of proof is on you if you want to demand otherwise. I don't need to prove my position because your claim is without evidence and a claim that can be made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. You haven't shown the evolution is a "poor explanation". I've studied evolution and as far as I'm concerned it's an "excellent explanation".

So if you want to demand that it's a poor explanation then the burden of proving that is on you. And recognize that the entire scientific community is in agreement with me. So it's not like I'm making a claim that isn't well understood by thousands of scientists.

You are the one who is making the unorthodox claim that isn't supported by the scientific community.

No, the "entire scientific community" is not in agreement with you, though you might think you are in agreement with them. But you would be wrong, for the purported agreement would depend on redefining science in terms of "orthodox" conformance to a particular theory or dogma. That's precisely what science is not, by definition, so that many scientists are happily unorthodox.

In any case this is a debate forum. I'm not here to parrot some imagined scientific orthodoxy.

All I see here is a gross ignorance of the evidence for evolution. It's not like a human eyeball just popped into existence one day by random chance. It evolved over millions of years. And so there was never a time when each individual part of the subsystem needed to gradually evolve independently of the eye as a whole. The whole eyeball began as a very crude eye-spot and slowly evolved to become the finial product we see today.

Please point me to any moderately serious person who says that evolution entails "a human eyeball just popped into existence one day by random chance," and I will join you in condemning their gross ignorance. Meanwhile I never suggested anything of the sort.

Nonetheless, evolution is not a simple function of "millions of years" of time. It's a function of lots of reproduction and lots of small coincidences: beneficial mutations matching otherwise hostile environmental conditions, for example. But lots and lots of small coincidences explaining any number of individual adaptations do not somehow "add up" to one big coincidence in the way of an ordered, complex system whose function depends entirely on its order and complexity. You can give it fifty trillion years and the same problem would remain.

And no, the explanatory problem of huge numbers of identifiable and precisely interconnected parts comprising complex systems does not go away because you prefer to describe the vertebrate eye, for example, as a singular "eye-spot" that slowly evolved into a singular "eyeball." LOL

So your assumption that all the individual parts of a complex highly evolved eyeball had to evolve independently is simply wrong. That suggestion represents a failure of Evolution 101.

No, it represents a disagreement with Evolution 101.

But have it your way: even if we assume all the individual parts evolved in tandem, the gargantuan coincidence involved in their eventually producing an irreducibly complex system remains.

Well, for one thing these highly evolved systems are not truly "irreducible" to begin with. That's just an arbitrary definition that a Creationist can place onto a highly evolved system. But it hasn't been shown to be irreducible in terms of evolution. It's only "irreducible" if you demand that it popped into finished form from nothing.

But that's not how evolution works. Nothing complex just "pops" into existence out of the blue.

Read my descriptions of irreducible complexity above. Michael Behe may have suggested that these systems are irreducible in terms of evolution (in the sense that they are "impossible" on evolution), but I have never made that argument. I certainly have never argued that complex systems "popped into existence out of the blue." I do continue to argue, however, that those systems are much more likely on design than on evolution.

A supernatural or extra-dimensional designer, on the other hand, adequately explains why all the parts of a complex system would come together in just such a way that a highly useful (even survival-dependent) and easily identifiable function would result.

But you are already jumping to this conclusion based on a grossly flawed idea of how evolution works.

Therefore your conclusion is unjustified.

Moreover, an unexplained supernatural designer is no explanation for anything.

You may as well be saying the boogieman did it.

I mean seriously. You jump to grossly false conclusions about evolution, and from there you jump to proposing an non-explanatory boogieman as the answer.

Until you can explain where this highly complex designing boogieman came from, you don't have an explanation for anything.

You aren't in any better shape than scientific naturalists who can't yet explain how the universe got started.

The only BIG DIFFERENCE is that the scientists openly confess that they don't yet have an explanation.

You, on the other hand, are claiming to have an explanation. And what's your explanation?

An Invisible Non-Detectable Unexplained Boogieman Did It!

So now let's ask WHO HAS THE BURDEN OF PROOF HERE?

The scientists who are openly confessing that they don't yet have the answer?

Or the theists who are claiming that an unexplained invisible boogieman is the explanation?

If you can't see why the theists are the only ones who are being asked to prove their claims then I just don't know what more can be said.

The scientists aren't making any claims that they can't support.

And most atheists aren't claiming there is no God. They are simply pointing out the obvious truth that there currently isn't any compelling reason to think that a God exists.

After all if an unexplained God can be considered a viable explanation for itself, then an unexplained universe should be considered to be a viable explanation for itself as well.

Adding an unexplained God into the mix hasn't solved anything. You're just as far away from knowing anything as you were before you proposed the unexplained God.

May as well call it a "boogieman", calling it a "God" doesn't change anything.

An unexplained entity is an unexplained entity no matter what label you try to paste onto it.

That's an awful lot of RANTING. Is there a particular argument somewhere in that jumbled pile of assertions, non-sequiturs, rhetorical questions and red herrings you would like me to address?