@Pambie Well, you also just got the realisation that there is more out there... and it might be good too not dismiss it or expect evidence for these big claims that are out there. So the clock kinda resets Pambie. You really don't have to be poor to make dumb descisions with louzy consequences... but loosing your skepticism for grand narratives of which there is no evidence, well that has lead many people towards louzy consequences. Most people don't even do that IRL, I'm pretty sure you don't do either. But hey, first you start with cherrypicking the things that might actually not be that unbelievable, which might end up in a slippery slope into a rabbithole some people just get lost in and never come out of. But Peter Popof thanks all people like that for their contribution.

Why don't you care about the "jesus crap"? Isn't it a bit arrogant to just dismiss the likelihood that all those people are right? Do you have any idea, how many pious and devoted christians have seen things that you and me will never understand... doesn't that mean that there is anything going on here? ... I would answer that there is nothing there, but I'm nothing short of stupid and arrogant.

@Kwek00 Louzy? Loosing?
There you go with "evidence" again. Most people, the vast majority, don't limit what they're willing to consider by whether or not people like you think there's "enough evidence" to support whatever it is they're considering. People believe what they do for all sorts of reasons, and often those reasons are PERSONAL. You know, they had an experience that changed their life (ex. and NDE) and that was enough to convince that person that such-and-such was real, or true.
And yes, I stand by what I said before about it being rather stupid and arrogant for someone to think we have it all wrapped up, that there isn't much new to discover, and that what we see is basically all there is.

@Pambie
@Pambie Yeah, louzy consequences... do you know how many people get scammed every year? A lot of people believe something, without evidence... loose their money. Some people loose their entire family when the person that presents you ideas like: "blessed are those who belive without seeing.". Yehova's witnesses that finally get out of the group that they got caugt up in, are still sitting together every week to talk about how they escaped the cult.

Do you think that life-changing experiencing, automatically need to be attributed to a phenomena that doesn't need any proof? What makes you believe, that human beings can keep their own mind in check to make sure their fantasies don't take over? Because there is a lot of evidence of people that let themselves go in fantasy world, wich sometimes creates extremely louzy consequences no matter how "personal" the subjective experience was.

I also never said we understand everything. But if you want to know, then just keep measuring.

Haunted houses? Someone comes in, start measuring... and so far we got nothing.
Claims of extraordinairy expriences because of some leyline lieing around? Someone comes in, start measuring and so far we got nothing.

... If you think that these claims are not being investigated, then you are wrong. The issue is, that so far, in all the time they have been doing this, there have been no results. Not even a sighting. Apperently all these phenomena dissapear when you remove the subjective experience of the once that claim they do, with someone trying to measure the phenomena. So why give any credibility to it now? The moment something is proven, I'll adapt my thinking. Not until then. It's not abnormal for the mind to play tricks on people, it's not flawless, we are able to imagine, hallucinate and fantasize. It's also strange that religious experiences that are typical to one religion (like seeing the mother marie) only happen with people inside that religion. How many christians get random experiences in which Ganesh suddenly appears to give them advice? Where are all the hindu's that see Jesus? I'm not saying their subjective experience is wrong, I'm saying that giving larger meaning to it without evidence, has the potential to bite you in the ass.

@newjaninev2 "What's the ground? You beg the question... you first need to establish its existence before seeking an explanation for that existence".

Do I really need to establish the existence of something so obviously real? Are you one of those people who believe that it's "all just chemistry"? No mixing of ingredients will ever produce life, and that was established by Pasteur (i.e. The Law of Biogenesis). However, now we're being told that life just somehow miraculously appeared in a pond about 3.6 thousand million years ago, but no one knows how, or why, but of course it must have happened this way because A) we're here, and B) the alternative is that God did it, and we can't have that!

@Pambie
Yes, you absolutely do. Otherwise you are making an argument based on incredulity - you are astounded by what you see and cannot think of an explanation therefore it must be something supernatural because there is no other possible explanation.

Do you need to establish that the Sun orbits the Earth when it's obvious that it doed?

Pasteur’s work refuted ‘spontaneous generation’ but that does not encompass abiogenesis.

Defining life makes it clearer:
Life is a self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution.

Simple, clear, and accurate, yes?

No need for spontaneous anything, no complexity involved (initially)

Any objections thus far?

@newjaninev2 What smug nonsense. This is how it goes.
When a person makes a claim, whether that be a positive one (ex. "God exists") or a negative one (ex. "God doesn't exist") it's incumbent upon that person to present his or her reasons for why that particular claim was made. Evidence is always helpful, because you're trying to convince another person, and so recounting a personal experience, for example, won't be enough.
However, when it comes to personal beliefs, and you're not really concerned with winning someone over to your point of view, just living the best life you can in the only way you know how, an event that affected you personally is usually far more convincing than any evidence that some self-proclaimed sceptic may come up with.
Whether you like it or not, that's the way most people (like around 96.7%) on Earth construct their worldview; i.e. they rely upon their intuition, past experiences, and what makes sense to them, and not any "evidence" that some smug atheist thinks will win them over. They don't care about that crap.

@BlueSkyKing By "evidence" you no doubt mean "scientific evidence", but where is the scientific evidence for the claim that we should only ever accept such evidence? Upon what evidence is it based? None. And the reason for this is because it's actually a philosophical position, a stance that can't be justified because it's self-refuting.

@BlueSkyKing Do you have any thoughts of your own? I've noticed atheists just love to quote the people they apparently admire, but rarely do they come up with something original, or at least an argument that is interesting.
Anyway, do you really need evidence before you'll believe anything at all? I don't. For example, I believe in and accept the, purely philosophical, concept of objective reality. And the reality of the past, and the existence of other minds, and so I'm not a solipsist or dogmatic materialist. There's a name for the attitude expressed in the "meme" you've posted above, and it's called Logical Positivism, and it has gone out of fashion because it can't be justified.