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:
Actually most of those are quite easy to argue against.
1. First of all your your friend is confusing evolution with the theory of how life began. Evolution is a theory that attempts to explain the change of life, not how it came into existence. Evolution only covers life forms that already exist. Molecules cannot evolve.
2. Because scientist don't know all the answers to everything in the universe is not a rational argument for the proof of a divine being. We don't know the answers to a lot of shit. It doesn't mean there is a god.
3. Those weren't leading mathmeticians who met with the evolutionist. They were mathmaticians, but leading? Nope. Most "Leading" mathmeticians are doing physics, not calculcating out bullshit like this. Secondly, those who brought their argument forward, their model was flawed. They didn't take into the account chemical stablities which make the possiblity of certain molecules forming as a much higher probably due to the fact that stable molecules have a much higher chance of forming than non stable molecules. They completely missed that in their model.
4. Who the fuck is Edward Conklin, and why does his opinion matter more than anybody else's?
5. Those assumptions about mutation and evolution are incorrect. In fact, for evolution to take place there doesn't have to be a mutation. All that has to happen is that some members of a species are more prone to survive because of a genetic feature they carry. When they survive, and those who don't have the genetic feature die out because of their lack of ability to survive, then soon the whole remainder of the species carries the feature forward, and because they interbreed the feature becomes stronger. For instance it is known that people with Red hair are slowly and surely representing a total lower percentage of the population. Because it is a recessive trait it will be slowly and surely bread to a lower and lower amount of people, by percentage in our society. No mutation is taking place. But one day, we probably won't have people with red hair anymore, or very few of them similar in numbers to Albino's. That is evolution. No mutation required.
6. Really all those transformations must have happened? Maybe some of them. But last I looked there were fish that stored their eggs inside of them and did live birth. Also, just because scientist haven't found any fossils yet, doesn't mean it didn't happen. It also means they may not be right too, because nothing has been proven. Fossils are hard to dig up. Much harder than making up stories and putting them in a book.
7. Mutations take generations and many many years to breed into the population. Most of our laboratories haven't been around long enough to observe such a phenomeneh. This isn't a science fiction movie where they inject something and it turns into a monster 6 hours later.
Now all that being said, the important thing is, none of your freinds arguments prove she is right about her side of the argument. In fact, believers have nothing more than a story written in a book to base their beliefs off of. Religions based on deities are all about manipulating weak minded people in the name of power. Eastern religions which are more philosophies than religions, are the only ones that are worth a fuck in my book.
