I have a friend who's trying to convert me from being a non-believer to believer. She wants me to try and debunk these questions/"facts" -- to "save" me:
So I imagine that she's trying to start by getting you to accept the possibility that there is a God. Is this a notion you reject?
Yes and no. More so, she's been trying to convince me the bible is fact and the word of 'god.' -- I don't believe a single word of whats written an any holy book/bible.
There are parts of the bible that are factually and historically accurate. Doesn't prove that the whole god thing is true.
your friend is a retard. those aren't reasons religion is important or useful to her, or anyone. why would she use them as a selling point? sell faith and religion for what is actually used for: to inspire awe and quelch anomie.
Just say what I said to an old college friend of mine who tried to "save" me. "I wasn't aware I needed to be saved". and when she continued, saying I wouldn't know if I needed to be saved or not...I said "I didn't ask to be saved." And then i said "now finish taking off your top...no, a little slower...that's it...daddy likes it when you do that..."
The third point is the only really interesting one to me. Fred Hoyle is probably most famous for being horribly wrong about the Big Bang (he believed in a static universe that's been around forever).
While the presentation makes it unclear, if that's supposed to be a knock on evolution, it really isn't. Evolution isn't a theory about how life originated in the first place. It's a theory about how life, after coming to be, developed complexity. Abiogenesis is a completely separate theory and rather more uncertain than evolution. There are two errors (in my view) that those who try to "invalidate" scientific theory about life engage in: 1. conflating evolution, abiogenesis and general cosmology into one, big theory (which they dub "evolution") and 2. making the implicit assertion that if "science" doesn't know something, it doesn't know anything. That is, if you can find one thing that science is relatively uncertain on or has no current answer for, it invalidates the whole endeavour.
I like how one of the sources was about using computer to calculate how to make a cell, and the possibility was zero! and the citing was from 1966. High-tech computers huh?
Look, in the 18th century we didn't know how to make jet-fighter planes that can use lasers and GPS satellites that use relativity, therefore we'd never be able to figure that kind of stuff out...
One of the big misunderstandings about evolution is that it is purposeful. What I mean is, the final result is not planned. We evolved into what we are, not because it is the only way it could have happened, but only because it is the way it did happen. So for the examples about the tornado at the junk yard, or the explosion at the printing press, the final result didnt have to be a 747 and a dictionary. It could also be a battleship, or a car, or Les Miserables or One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish. The possibilities of what could have been created are limitless.
But being serious, the probability of all that stuff happening is just like they say, HOWEVER that's why it's so amazing! 5 billion years is a LONG time. And there is new evidence to suggest that yes you can get proteins to start from nothing.
I think the analogies show that it is improbable that something highly ordered, like a cell, could manifest itself out of chaos; not that the pupose for a tornado is to make a jet or an explosion's purpose to make a book.
I've also heard recently that bacteria and virii may have driven each other to improve faster than they would have left alone.
