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Atheism is based on Faith and I will explain why!

Mon, 2008-09-29 03:36 — SmartLX
Question:: 
From a comment by Infinite Force at http://asktheatheist.com/question/what_do_athiest_believe_about_the_origins_of_our_universe_and_life_on_our_planet: "I am an independent scientific researcher and I am a blood driven theist. I don't believe in no religions of this world and I don't have any religious documents to make me bias when I do scientific research. I have to say that you atheist are cowards to admit that you have a faith based belief system. Faith - Belief in the un-seen (life spontaneously arising from non-living matter) If you don't believe GOD created you than it's obvious you arose by un-intelligent causes. Chemical evolution has never been observed in this natural world and it is not science. This is only scientist assumptions. Since there is no evidence to prove that life spontaneously appeared on earth it takes ****faith**** to believe you spontaneously arose from non-living matter. The atheism idea is based off of no logic, no evidence, or no reason. It’s just a title to hide behind to attack other people religions when In all reality you are religious your self. You don’t have to believe in a god or gods to be considered a religion. Buddha don’t believe in god or gods and it’s a religion. All you need is an idea that you hold to be true with no evidence to back it up. You atheist have no proof that life spontaneously arose and to believe this is called faith. You atheist try and hide behind science but theist like me are not going to allow you to hide behind the origins of life because I‘m a scientific researcher that love doing what he does, and chemical evolution is not science it‘s only assumptions that have no kind of evidence to back it up. Atheism is identified as a religion! Faith and religion is synonyms please refer to your thesaurus. I am religious because I do believe that there is an intelligent infinite force that created everything and the evidence I have to support this is observable in this natural world. That’s right, I have strong evidence to prove that life arose by intelligent causation and it’s called the Genetic code. I will post my evidence up after this post to prove that the origins of life started by intelligent causation. If you atheist don’t believe it takes faith to believe that life arose spontaneously without an intelligent cause I am asking for you to provide evidence to back it up. If you exercise Ad Hominem or dodge the question I am here to expose your religious concept to people in this forum. You have a faith based belief system and that’s a fact."
Atheist Answer: 

If you're going to argue that abiogenesis is not science, it might help to define science first.

Science is the formulation of natural explanations for observable phenomena in the universe. Abiogenesis (the emergence of life from non-life), while not yet observed itself, is a natural explanation for the observable phenomenon of life. It is therefore a scientific hypothesis, and yes, it is science. What it is not (yet) is a theory.

Though some natural selection may have occurred in the process, abiogenesis should not be classified as chemical evolution. It may have been a rapid, non-cyclical process instead. We freely admit that we have no clue how it happened.

At least until we do observe a second abiogenesis in a lab or in nature (positing that the event which produced us was the first), not only do we stick to speculation as to how it happened, but we refrain from stating 100% certainty that it did happen. If evidence of intelligent design were to emerge (say, actual physical impressions of fingerprints in our DNA) we would soon abandon the hypothesis that we are the products of abiogenesis. We would then try to determine whether the designer was a god, an alien or an extinct Earth creature, and in all three cases start to hypothesise about the abiogenesis and evolution of that being, if any.

This is the difference between a scientific hypothesis and a faith position. We assume a scientific hypothesis for practical purposes as the best current explanation until a better one comes along, at which point we chop and change. We're not precious about it at all, at least until it accumulates enough evidence to be declared a theory. A man with a faith position defends it to the end, because he usually expects no contradictory (or even supporting) evidence to present itself.

Another difference is that a hypothesis must be falsifiable, which means there must be some hypothetical event which demonstrates it is false. Our abiogenesis is falsifiable because we might find firm evidence of a creator, like a signature or a work log billions of years old. By comparison, what would falsify the intelligent creation of life? Nothing. Even if we achieved abiogenesis in a lab, it might be the case that although abiogenesis is possible, we were still designed.

On the basis of this last point, I submit to you the idea that intelligent creation of life is a faith position where abiogenesis is not. There may be additional ways to establish this comparison, but I'll leave it at that for now.

I've seen the genetic code argument before, you know. The idea is that all codes are intelligently designed, so the existence of one in DNA proves a designer. That's an argument from ignorance because there is no evidence that a code is impossible without a designer. Further, if you present this argument, I can provide examples of naturally occurring codes which have nothing to do with life, like the means by which mineral crystals can transmit their structure to non-crystallised material.

There's another side to the genetic code argument which states that it's impossible for new information to appear naturally. We've been over that here.

- SmartLX