Still Crazy After All These Years: Creationists Keep Trying

The thing is, almost no figure like that in science is ever given as an absolute. Of course that's how it's presented in the media but any figure like that which is presented or published is going to come with errors. And, in this case, the errors are likely to be whopping (absolutely, if not relatively). Take it from someone who had to go back through a 223 page thesis and add errors on to absolutely every value I presented, every scientist knows it isn't an absolute.

Which is the only reasonable assumption it's possible to make, but whatever.

It's a joke.

Science is a process, nothing more. A remarkably successful process which has allowed humans to make gigantic leaps forward in understanding and technology in the last couple of centuries.

Nobody who understands what science actually is thinks any "magical powers" are involved and nobody doesn't recognize the limitations or have a healthy sense of skepticism about it. In many ways skepticism and the recognition of limitations (and the desire to go beyond them) are what makes science so powerful.

Science not only corrects itself and throws out theories which are proven to be wrong but puts everything on the table without any pre-assumption. That's why it will always be a better way of understanding the world than religion.

In many ways science vs religion is completely a false 'fight'. Everything religion has to say about 'softer' subjects like morality etc, science isn't interested in and religion is utterly un-equipped to rival science on 'harder' subjects to the point where listening to what religions have to say on these matters would be laughable if so many religious people didn't want to actually do it.

Religion's real enemy is rationality, which is obviously closely related to science seeing as it's a pre-requisite for good science.

What is your obsession with this topic? Of course science could correct that. The minute any evidence whatsoever arises that suggests life on Earth didn't develop spontaneously, science will investigate it and change any previous assumptions if the evidence is strong enough.

Reasonable assumptions have to be made to progress. That's just how it works I'm afraid. You see something, you think about how it might work, you make an assumption and you test the data against that assumption. If it holds up and can't be disproven, it stands the test until a new or better way of explaining things comes along. Without making reasonable, well-founded, if sometimes, speculative assumptions, we wouldn't get anywhere. Beleive me, I've done this. The ability to make sensible assumtpions and then test them rigorously is a strength, not a weakness. And so is the ability to throw out ideas that don't 'fit'.

p.s. Scientists are also perfectly content to say 'We don't know this at the moment but we're going to try and find out'. Religion doesn't do that. So maybe it's difficult for religious people to see why scientists don't have such a huge problem with not knowing everything about everything right now! Religion pretends they do and can't grasp that it's better to admit you don't.

Words and definitions can be a problem here but actually, I'd say there's plenty of evidence to support the idea that 'life' (as in all life on Earth) developed 'spontaneously' (although I don't like suing that word as it has other connotations which might not necessarily be accurate here). Spontaneously would suggest it wasn't seeded by something or triggered by some natural event. Both of which are entirely possible and seen as viable scientific explanations. None of it's conclusive and you know we're some way off being able to draw up a 'road map to life' but...

- We know life (as in individual lives and new forms of life from older forms) develop 'spontaneously' and naturally. We see it all the time. This supports the assumption that life in general started in a similar way.

- We're well past the point of thinking that 'life' is some kind of magic beyond the physical world. We know exactly what we're made of and we know it's basically the same stuff that everything else is made of. We're just arranged differently.

- Of every physical, chemical or biological process we've ever studied and managed to understand, all of them have natural explanations. To assume that life is somehow a special case would actually be a much wilder assumption than to assume it's not.

- We can draw up plausible possibilities of how it might have happened. We can look at the raw materials and (with what we've learned already) make a reasonable case for what the process might have been or might have looked like. That we're able to do this at all, strengthens the natural (or spontaneous) assumption. That we haven't got it figured all out straight away (as I explained previously) isn't as damaging as you seem to think.