'55 Science Paper Retracted to Thwart Creationists

i_like_spam writes "The New York Times has up a story about a paper published in 1955 by Homer Jacobson, a chemistry professor at Brooklyn College. The paper, entitled 'Information, Reproduction and the Origin of Life', speculated on the chemical qualities of earth in the Hadean time, billions of years ago when the planet was beginning to cool down to the point where, as Dr. Jacobson put it, 'one could imagine a few hardy compounds could survive.' Nobody paid much attention to the paper at the time, but today it is winning Dr. Jacobson acclaim that he does not want — from creationists who cite it as proof that life could not have emerged on earth without divine intervention. So after 52 years, he has retracted the paper. 'Dr. Jacobson's retraction is in "the noblest tradition of science," Rosalind Reid, editor of American Scientist, wrote in its November-December issue, which has Dr. Jacobson's letter. His letter shows, Ms. Reid wrote, "the distinction between a scientist who cannot let error stand, no matter the embarrassment of public correction," and people who "cling to dogma."'"

Comments

Celebration/Mourning

[BWJones]

This retraction is to be simultaneously celebrated and mourned. Celebrated in the sense that we have a true scientist who will hold up the scientific process and make every effort to prove himself and the community of scientists wrong in order to make the science stronger. When we have individuals that fail to attempt to prove their work as incorrect, we have to acknowledge that they are being driven by other motives and they are not to be trusted.

This noble effort is also to be mourned because of the manipulation and steering of science to fill political goals driven by lack of scientific understanding in the wider community.

Re:Celebration/Mourning

[ironwill96]

You're right, it should be celebrated and mourned. To me, it is bothersome that the Scientific community would celebrate it as thwarting "those who cling to dogma".

Dogma implies that people of faith are following something merely because it is pushed by a church and hammered into their skulls, not that people are capable of independent thought and coming to their own conclusions. As a person who does believe in some faith, I seem to be in a small minority (maybe a less vocal group) on Slashdot, but all of these articles bring up the lack of tolerance of people with differing views on both sides - both from people who support some version of Creationism and from those who hold to strict Scientific beliefs. I tend to compromise in the middle which I guess makes me a sell-out to both sides, but at least i'm clear about where I stand.

I hope that both sides can be more capable of independent thought and not snipe at each other constantly, it is child-ish and something that I thought we could have outgrown by now.

Re:Celebration/Mourning

[BWJones]

You're right, it should be celebrated and mourned. To me, it is bothersome that the Scientific community would celebrate it as thwarting "those who cling to dogma".

I am unaware of any scientist who is celebrating this as a thwart to "those who cling to dogma". What we are celebrating is the willingness of a scientist to retract his own work when it failed to be held up to scientific investigation and contained errors. The willingness of the classically trained scientist to search for veracity and be enthusiastic enough to put their work up for criticism by ones colleagues while also be willing to retract work that cannot be held as scientific fact is what is to be celebrated.

Re:Celebration/Mourning

[pluther]

Is the assertion "Life arose from non-life around three billion years ago on the prehistoric earth" falsifiable without resorting to some form of the anthropic principle?

Absolutely it's falsifiable.

One way to falsify it would be to show evidence that there was life on the earth before then.

Another way would be to discover life elsewhere, on some other planet, and demonstrate that it has a common ancestor in the evolutionary chain as ourselves. This would not immediately disprove Earth as the origin, but it would indicate that it is not necessarily the origin of all life.

Another way to falsify the statement would be to demonstrate that despite extensive search there has been no evidence of life found in three billion year old strata (I have no idea if we actually have access to any, outside the moon). This would indicate life arose more recently.

There are all sorts of ideas about how abiogenesis may have come about, and a number of people are researching, coming up with theories and hypotheses, and, most importantly of all, ideas on how they can be investigated.

Of course, there is no generally accepted theory of abiogenesis yet, the way there is of gravity, electro-magnetism, and evolution by natural selection. But they're working on it.

Which is more than can be said of any Creationist. In all the years they've been around, they've yet to suggest a single experiment, or come forth with any single thing their "theory" would predict. All they can do is dig up gaps in our current understanding of evolutionary processes and claim they are "proof" of whatever they want to propose.

Re:Celebration/Mourning

[mrpeebles]

Only 19th+ century fundamentalists are unimaginative enough to read Genesis as a set of supernatural claims. (Maybe in another thousand years groups will consider Romeo and Juliet a parable warning parents to let their kids date who they want to.) Creationists take the differences between science and religion and push them under the rug; I claim you are caricaturizing them. Science is only retrospectively based on evidence and consensus. Scientific discovery requires as much faith as any religion. And religion does not ignore evidence. The progression from sacrificing first born children at the altar of Baal to secular government and nonviolent resistence has not been a random walk.

As for cognitive dissonance: I consider myself a "moderately" religious person. I do not blindly believe in Genesis. However, when I see how violence propogates itself through generations in the middle east and elsewhere, I cannot believe that idea of original sin does not resonate with some Truth. Certainly Adam and Eve were not real, but a quantum mechanical wavefunction may not be real either.

My life is filled with actions and belief not based on evidence or logic though. For example, I could probably fill pages with the strange rituals I use to beg microsoft software products to not crash. No, I think cognitive dissonance is believing that throughout history all human behavior has been dominated by irrational beliefs, except for 21st century atheists.

Just my 2 cents.

Futile Effort

[eldavojohn]

The retraction came about when, on a whim, Dr. Jacobson ran a search for his name on Google. At age 84 and after 20 years of retirement, "I wanted to see, what have I done in all these many years?" he said. "It was vanity. What can I tell you?" That's vanity? No, the only thing he's missing is a bottle of Jack Daniels & that's how I spend my Friday nights!

But in all serious, this is going to be a pretty futile effort. It's greatly appreciated but it's probably going to backfire. This could be spun as 'lawyers' forcing a scientist's views out of sight, a scientist that's just trying to tell the truth. The same lawyers that have orchestrated the dinosaur bones found across the world.

And the character assassination from the Creationists will most likely consist of 'waffler' and 'flip-flopper', two terms I have no idea why they even exist.

This is the sign of a man of the highest quality in my eyes. I only wish that everyone--especially the politicians--look to him for guidance in how to 1) take ownership of something when you're wrong and 2) fix it.

Likely result

[TheMeuge]

The creationist zealots will likely take this bit of news, and embrace it as evidence that the scientific community is trying to be deceitful by withdrawing a "clearly correct" paper, for political reasons.

The amount of confirmation bias that people can exhibit when their passions are challenged is incredible.

Re:Likely result

[TheMeuge]

Or we'll just say that nothing is written in stone, and the papers you publish today may be retracted tomorrow when you change your minds.

Papers are retracted when there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary of their conclusions... most of the time that happens when new facts emerge as the science progresses.
<blockquote>This is more a blow (in the long term) to the idea that science yields objective truth, IMO.</blockquote>
I think the bigger concern is that you look for "objective truth"(tm)... There is no such thing - there is only "best approximation" based on the evidence thus far obtained. Science and the scientific method just happen to provide the best framework for making reasonable judgments about the real world, based on theories, the only measure of the success of which, is their PREDICTIVE CAPACITY.

If you come up with a better system, let me know. Until then, I'll be happy with an idea, rather than a belief-based "objective truth", thank you.

Re:Likely result

[MightyMartian]

"Vance Ferrell, who said he put together the material posted on Evolution-facts.org, said if the paper had been retracted he would remove the reference to it. Mr. Ferrell said he had no way of knowing what motivated Dr. Jacobson, but said that if scientists "look like they are pro-creationist they can get into trouble.""

Ah yes, another favorite tactic of the pseudo-scientific con-artists. "I can't say why he's doing it, but here's why he's doing it..."

Re:Likely result

[Itchyeyes]

I can think of about 100% of the US population who prove his statement incontrovertibly true. Everyone is biased. The difference is between the ones who are aware of their own biases and those who are deluded into thinking that they aren't.

Re:Likely result

[ultranova]

Everyone is biased. The difference is between the ones who are aware of their own biases and those who are deluded into thinking that they aren't.

Nah. The difference is between the people who are aware of their biases - namely, me and everyone who agrees with me - and people who are sadly deluded and too caught up in the web of deceit or just plain too stupid to realize it or too stubborn to admit it, or who actually purposefully and maliciously lying and/or engaged in a huge conspiracy against the truth for whatever reason.

If you or the moderators disagree, that's just because your bias of thinking yourself as objective. Let go of your bias and support the objective point of view by modding me up ;).

The thing is, we humans don't actually perceive reality, we perceive an approximation of it, produced by our senses and mental faculties. It is impossible to know how closely your approximation actually resembles reality as a whole or at any particular point, because you have no way of comparing it to reality proper, because the latter is not perceptible to you. That's why people usually assume that their approximation is a good match and anyone who disagrees is wrong or biased. And this is assuming that a particular perception is actually based on some objective reality, which is not at all certain for things like moral values.

What this means is that no one is truly aware of their own biases, since that awareness could only be gained by comparing your approximation of reality to reality proper, which is impossible. You, gentle reader, are biased, and not aware of all of your biases, no matter how certain you are of your own objectivity. You can trust me on this, because I clearly am truly objective, being aware of all this :).

Re:Likely result

[NeutronCowboy]

You do realize that Occam's razor is not a predictive theory, but rather a heuristic employed when looking at competing ideas? QED is mind-boggling in its complexity, but no one would dream of applying occam's razor to it and replace it with the old approach of "light is instantaneous."

Re:Likely result

[Bellum Aeternus]

"Facts don't change with time"

Really? So the earth is still flat and the sun revolves around it? and matter is seamless?

Get a grip. What we humans call "facts" are our closest approximation of the truth we have now. Once you realize that, facts do indeed change with time. That's the beauty and the problem with science; it's not dogma but a collection of evidence over time accumulated so that current and future generations can make better and better attempts to understand nature. As we accumulate more evidence our understanding changes and things we may have believed to be fact in the past are known to be incorrect now (or things we believe to be fact now may not be considered fact in the future).

Religion's failure has always been a resistance to change and the truth because those in power only remain in power if they have all the keys.

Re:Likely result

[Chris Burke]

If it was wrong, then withdraw the paper because it is wrong. Why mention creationism at all. Oh wait, he didn't realize it was wrong until it was quoted by creationists, and we know THEY can't be right, so it was withdrawn BECAUSE of them, not because it was wrong.

You should withdraw this post because it is wrong.

He re-read the paper because of the quotes by creationists. It was re-reading the paper that revealed the errors in the paper. It was the errors is the paper that caused him to withdraw it.

Do you get it? He withdrew the paper because it was wrong. Creationists drove him to discover that it was wrong, but their quotes are not WHY it was withdrawn.

I don't have a problem with the scientific method. However Evolution isn't PART of the scientific method, because it hasn't predicted ANYTHING.

Of course it has. Experiments done on flies and bacteria have borne out the predictions of evolution, and frequently we discover fossils belonging to an intermediary species predicted by evolution. Hell, DNA itself was predicted by evolutionary theory, in particular a biological method of passing traits from parent to offspring that does NOT include traits acquired during life.

When scientists can create life from inert matter, I'll agree that evolution conforms to the scientific method

Evolution does not attempt to explain the origins of life, it only explains the diversification of life. Stop acting like you respect the scientific method when you can't even apply it.

Re:Likely result

[Chris Burke]

Additional research. There's been quite a lot of that done in the 55 years since the paper was published.

Re:Likely result

[Tack]

Until religion makes claims about the physical universe that contradicts what we have learned through science. Then suddenly coexistence isn't quite as easy.

Re:Likely result

[VendettaMF]

It's a fairly safe bet I have read the bible more thoroughly and more critically than you.
Six times in full, solo (though I will confess to skimming the "Begats" and the Psalms.
Twice in full in day by day study with a study group (No skimming).
Dozens of times piecemeal in search of specific items.

Christianity which is not based on traditions, but rather on faith in the Word of God which has withstood thousands of years of oppression

Exactly the same as every other religion and their infallible texts which have been miraculously supplied and preserved. It's nonsense to claim a special place for christianity. It's not any different.
There's nothing wrong with (your branch of) Christianity being a religion. That one is a pointless battle. You're fighting against the very definition of religion. Your claim though that christianity is not tradition based is a nonsense. The traditions are mostly documented in the bible you clutch, and others are disguised as being "an understanding of the true meaning" of the same.

As you said, you've located two of the items for yourself. You have however, started cherry-picking already. You claimed that all scripture is God-Breathed. Make up your mind.

But all other winged creatures that have four legs you are to detest
here's a hint. There are none! The bibles writers believed that insects had four legs. Are you telling me you trust the Divine Inspiration through a process that can't even transmit a single digit number without error?

And no, pi does not, in effect, equal 3. That you would even suggest so indicates a lack of critical thought on your part that borders on the unforgivable in a forum specifically aimed for nerds and geeks.

Night, Day and Plants pre-sun... Perhaps you should actually go and read Genesis yourself? It's the very 1st chapter and already the books credibility (and yours for all your claims of knowing it better than me) is falling apart.

1st : Night and Day.
3: And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4: And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
5: And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

2nd:Plants
11: And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
12: And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

3rd:Sun and moon
14: And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
15: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
16: And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
17: And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
18: And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.
19: And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

Regarding Pi:
I Kings 7
23: And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other: it was round all about, and his height was five cubits: and a line of thirty cubits did compass it about.

2 Chronicles 4
2: Also he made a molten sea of ten cubits from brim to brim, round in compass, and five cubits the height thereof; and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about.

God can't do math. Delightful.

See now, I'm sorry so many years of your life have been wasted indoctrinating yourself (or being indoctrinated) into a false belief, but living an entire life in this level of denial would be even worse. Open your eyes. The bible is no

Why did he do it?

[Cro Magnon]

If he discovered clear errors and retracted it for that reason, that's fine, if somewhat tardy.

If he retracted it just because creationists quoted it, that's an example of the same dogma religious zealots are critisized for.

Re:Why did he do it?

[Merk]

If you RTFA, it says that he was reminded of the paper because the creationists quoted it. Because it was brought to his attention again he re-read it. He discovered it contained embarrassing factual errors, so he retracted it. It's too bad that he only caught the errors after they had been misused, but it's great that he caught the errors eventually and responded appropriately.

Re:i'm confused on the timeline

[feed_me_cereal]

The same faith held by Jews, Muslims, and Christians. Last time I checked, the "scientists" were outnumbered.

Last time I checked, popular belief didn't make things true. A majority of the population of the world used to think the sun revolved around the earth. It was this "scientific minority" you speak of that happened to be right. This was not an isolated incident, either; it has happened fairly regularly throughout history.

Our documentation is far older than anything they have.

...Which only means it was written by less informed people. How does this help you? Guess what, there are religious texts/artifacts that are older than the Bible. Perhaps you should switch to paganism.

Listen, pal, if you don't trust scientists, then give up all your modern conveniences and move into a cave. You should be respectful of the work they've done to provide you with what you have.

Re:When will creationist realize?

[MightyMartian]

You are aware, I trust, that other than a remotely small number of scientists out there, there is no debate. Creationism and Biblical Literalism were tossed in the trash heap of bad ideas beginning in the 18th century (actually a helluva lot earlier, if you count St. Augustine, and even earlier if you count the fact that the Jews hadn't believed in the Hebrew rip-off of Sumerian cosmography for a few centuries prior to Christ).

There is no debate in the scientific community about whether evolution produced all life or not. There's a cultural and political debate, which scientists have been dragged into. Whatever you make of your opinions and claims, don't pretend for one moment that science is on your side.

Re:Ironic curiosity

[ArikTheRed]

We're talking about evidence here, which has nothing to do with joy or peace. Facts don't care if you feel good about them.

Re:i'm confused on the timeline

[bckrispi]

read Genesis and you'll see that the creation story pretty much mirrors evolution anyway. First there was nothing, then stars formed, light, planets formed, fish, then animals, then man. It's the same damn thing morons.

So where in the evolutionary ladder do the talking snakes and rib-clone women fit?

Science vs. Faith

[$lingBlade]

Hasn't this argument been beaten to death already? Maybe I'm wrong, and yes I'm over simplifying but basically it comes down to this: Science tries to explain *how* things happened, Faith tries to explain *why* things happened. At least in terms of planetary history. Personally, I'm interested in both how and why things happen the way they do. Most times, in my experience, science does a better job at explaining how things are happening and sometimes why they happen. I lost my faith in faith around the time I started asking questions and got back a lot of crappy answers. However, I wouldn't completely rule out the possibility of *some* kind of creative force simply because we may not have the tools to demonstrate or understand it fully.

Re:The article stereotypes faith

[808140]

The idea that all scientific knowledge is provisional, able to be challenged and overturned, is one thing that separates matters of science from matters of faith.

Not necessarily. Blanket statements like this are stupid. Sure, some people refuse to allow their faiths to be challenged, but most of my experience with people of faith has been the opposite.

While I agree that blanket statements are often stupid, sometimes they are correct. In this case, your experiences seem to fly in the face of everyone else's.

All science is based on axioms as well, which aren't supported either, that's why they're called axioms.

No, science is not based on axioms — you're thinking of mathematics, which is not the same thing. Science is not based on deductive logic like math is — quite the opposite, in fact. Science is based on inductive logic, which works in the opposite direction: the scientist observes the world around him and tries to elucidate its underlying structure from those observations. So in a sense, the scientist does not know what the axioms are; he is trying to discover them.

Both scientists and people of faith have a hard time when someone questions their axioms.

Ignoring for a moment your misuse of the term "axiom": I will concede that a scientist who has developed his own theories and who accepts them may find it difficult or painful to accept that they are wrong. However, science as a discipline is founded on the notion that models and theories must be tested, and one scientist (or a group of scientists) stubbornly refusing to accept that their models are incorrect does not materially effect science as a whole, especially in the long term. Religion is not at all the same in this regard; many people continue to reject observable phenomena because they contradict their faith.

But I see no evidence to show that people of faith are less likely to accept a challenge of their axioms: in fact, they are more likely to accept that challenge, and if truly presented with something that can prove it's falsity, I would say a person of faith is much more likely to overturn that belief than a mathematician would be to overturn one of Euler's axioms.

I should warn you; I am a mathematician. What are Euler's axioms?

Leaving that aside for now, it seems from your comment that you are profoundly confused about the differences between science and mathematics, the latter being properly thought of as a branch of philosophy, and not science at all. Math does not concern itself with what is true in a physical sense; from a mathematical perspective, whether the world is flat or round is of no importance whatsoever. Math is a logical excursion, and at a core level axioms are totally arbitrary. It's a game of logic, and we deduce what we can from a few axioms that we essentially make up. Now, it is true that it is not possible to prove that a sufficiently complex set of axioms is self-consistent; you might say that we take this as a matter of faith. But it isn't faith that is anything like religious faith: it's more like having faith that the Sudoku puzzle you're wrestling with has a solution even if you lack the mathematical ability to prove that it really does.

Math cannot, by its nature, be in conflict with religion. It does not attempt, by itself, to predict or characterize anything in the natural world. That scientists find it a useful tool is a happy coincidence (or unhappy, depending on your belief system).

Re:Ironic curiosity

[gomiam]

You miss the point. Faith isn't scientific. If having faith brings you joy and peace, congratulations. But don't try to bring it into science, for faith requires belief without proof, and science requires proof before belief. Taking the concept from Carl Sagan, faith is usually prejudice and science is postjudice.

Re:Ironic curiosity

[sabernet]

When I tell them, yes. That's the point of communication: to get your bloody point across. I've failed at communication if what I said can be paraphrased to mean both "You're cool." and "Kill all infidels."

I don't go to my car dealer and stare him down while uttering, "This vehicle...it bleeds. Lo be those that do so. Fix thusly. Cheese wagon, rolling softly down the goat mouse."

But to be fair, most of the paraphrasing in religion stems from the fact that many people are trying to live based on an instruction manual written over a millennium ago in a different language. Sort of like using the Japanese booklet for an Atari2600 to learn how to configure your American DVR to record your favorite shows.

Re:reversing the burden of proof

[misanthrope101]

The assertion that disease is not caused by demonic possession is not falsifiable--does that cast doubt on the germ theory? My point, loosely, is that many attack evolution through what they consider to be its weak point--abiogenesis. Abiogenesis actually isn't part of evolutionary theory, and Darwin's Origin of Species doesn't even address where life came from, only where the variety came from. Anyway, the attack on abiogenesis is easy because you can turn skeptic and say "you can't falsify this, so it's not science," and my point here is that science deals only with the natural world, and all explanations are going to lie in the natural world, even if they have to remain speculative and even hazy. At no point is science going to throw up its hands and say "we can't prove where life started, so it must've been Shiva|Mithra|God|Zeus!" I've read a bit on abiogenesis, and all of the writers I've seen have cautioned repeatedly that the area is speculative at best. It has no bearing on evolutionary theory.

Re:Ironic curiosity

[Alsee]

the Bible, which is God-Breathed according to 2 Timothy 3:16

I'm really not looking to debate theology, but I'd like to note:
(1) That is obviously circular. If the the Bible is not God-Breathed OR not flawlessly-scribed OR not flawlessly-translated, then it's circular reference to itself obviously doesn't change anything.
(2) The majority of Christians do not see a conflict between evolution and the Bible.

More proof is in nature, in the complexity and creativness of it

Evolution is a proven engine of complexity and creativity. In fact I have done experiments myself and directly witnessed and proven that fact.

I am astounded at the people who presume to tell God how He is and is not allowed to run His universe. We have an amazing universe with awe inspiring laws of physics, and I am baffled at how some people can accept God making perfect and complete mechanisms to run His universe - nuclear fusion to power the sun and provide us light - the spinning earth orbiting the sun to divide day from night and create th3 seasons - the laws of chemistry to provide us food and create DNA and run all of our biochemical processes - yet they insist on telling God that He is FORBIDDEN to have chosen to use evolution to create the diversity of life on earth.

God can use optics as his chosen mechanism to create rainbows, but God cannot use evolution as his chosen mechanism to create His diversity of life?

I don't understand that.

One question I don't have an answer for is, how can scientists reliably speculate the state of this earth millions or billions of years ago with the evidence we have now, in this day and age?

For a moment, imagine a deceiving God. A God planting false evidence to mislead us.

If that were true, you couldn't know or trust anything. You could be a brain in a jar. Everything you see and hear could be a complete fiction. In fact all of your memories could be planted deceptions. The entire universe could have been created three days ago, and everything you think you know and believe could be an elaborate deliberate deception.

*If* one accepts the premise of a deliberately deceiving God, one cannot know or believe anything. Communication itself becomes meaningless. All rational thought and communication is null and void.

The first assumption for rational thought and rational communication MUST be to reject the notion that we are being deliberately deceived by a malicious lying God. If God wants to deceive us with by planting misleading evidence, then We Shall Be Misled.

Some people try to assert that the earth is around 6,000 years old. They assert that the Grand Canyon was quickly carved by a torrent of water after Noah's Flood. You don't need to be any sort of expert to see that is wrong. A huge fast gush of water over a short timespan will carve earth in a straight line. A small slow flow of water over millions of years will carve earth in a meandering snaking path. Aerial photos of the Grand Canyon show not only a winding path, it shows several sharp U-turns. Sharp U-turns that a short fast gush of water would instantly cut straight through. Geologists are not stupid. There are a THOUSAND things that demonstrate the Grand Canyon is millions of years old, my example is simply an obvious point that anyone and everyong can see is obviously true without a geology PhD.

There are only two possibilities. Either the Grand Canyon (and the Earth) really is extremely old, or God went to quite a bit of effort to plant a lot of evidence designed to deceive us into believing it is old. I reject the notion of a lying deceiving God, but in any case if God wants to deceive us then We Shall Be Deceived.

Forensic scientists can establish Beyond-Any-Reasonable-Doubt what happened at a crime scene, even if there was no witness. Scientists can determine a great many things about the past Beyond-Any-Reasonable-Doubt, even if there was no one there to witness it.

There is a chuck of the fossil

Re:Ironic curiosity

[Attila Dimedici]

That's easy. A visible, measured, violation of the laws of science.

In short. A miracle.

Nephilium

So, resurrection from the dead isn't good enough for you? Oh that's right all the witnesses aren't valid since they believed that such a miracle was a proof of God....so the only witness you would trust is one who didn't believe that the miracle indicated the existence of God, except that if they didn't believe that what they had witnessed was reason to believe in God why should you? So the only "proof" of a creator that you will accept is a violation of the laws of science (as you understand them) that you witness. Therefore, the only length of time that people have had to prove the existence of the creator is your lifetime.