Neil deGrasse Tyson Explains Why He Believes Faith & Reason Are Irreconcilable

Hi!

 

I believe in Crystal Light cause I believe in me

[video]http://youtu.be/T49GkeO11p0[/video]

 

uh, unicorns and god are not in the same league Denny, nor are their accomplishments.

 

You could (sort of) make a logical argument that unicorns are not in the same league as a deistic god because apparent fine tuning (or perhaps some other philosophical argument) MAY or may not point to a creator adjusting laws of nature. Belief in such a God would be slightly more rationally defensible than belief in a unicorn.

That doesn't get you anywhere when you start talking about any specific anthropocentric/intervening God of human tradition, including Yahweh. Thor is quite comparable to a unicorn, and so is Yahweh.

 

Thor is more comparable to John Henry. Neither a unicorn nor Yahweh could wield a fictional hammer quite like Thor or Henry.

 

Your question contained this, "If you don't believe he doesn't exist".

Again I say, I have seen nothing to prove God is not responsible for origins of creation. Since no man can create any form of life, that is very strong evidence he needs considerable help in doing so.
You can give every Darwinian scholar in this form and any you can recruit, a fair shot at doing so without a resulting change in the facts.

 

that's very anthropocentric of you.

what's your evidence that abiogenesis couldn't happen naturally? humans would need considerable help creating supernovae also, but we understand pretty well how they occur naturally without the need of intelligent intervention. the same might be true for abiogenesis.

also for all you know scientists could create life in a lab tomorrow. the fact that they haven't yet isn't evidence for anything.

 

That would be a well kept secret, also beyond belief.

 

not the point, which was you are diving head first into a god-of-the-gaps fallacy.

 

Big Bang Theory

Primordial Soup

Abiogenesis

None of these can be proven using the scientific method.

Etc etc

 

I do think it's more plausible that abiogenesis can explain how oil, natural gas, and coal are produced over how organic life and the rise of the human race was the result of the process, though.

Logically, it makes more sense than human beings eventually rising after billions of genetic mutations from some elements that somehow had the Quickening and made them able to reproduce.

 

Science is more about determining probability by looking at evidence than actually "proving" things in the philosophical sense you mean here.

Technically it isn't proven that the earth revolves around the sun. The evidence indicates the probability must be pretty close to 100%, and for practical purposes we can operate as it if were proven, but there's always a slim chance something else might be true.

Evidence for common descent (all life is interrelated and forms a branching tree) is similarly compelling, as is evidence that the earth is billions of years old, even though scientists can't directly observe or recreate these things.

It's hard to say much firmly about abiogenesis AT THIS POINT, but there isn't really any intrinsic barrier to scientists finding evidence of how it "most probably" happened. Obviously they aren't going to be able to recreate it exactly since it likely took millions of years and billions of incremental steps. But that doesn't mean scientists can't look at evidence and assign probability to different hypothesis of how it may have occurred.

Same is true for big bang. Scientists don't need to recreate one to assign probability to the hypothesis. Expanding universe + CMBR in the context of GR is pretty compelling evidence that a hot big bang of some sort is what "probably" happened.