So the Origins Conference sponsored by the Skeptics Society was held last Saturday, and a good time was had by all. Or, at least, a good time was had by most. Or, maybe the right thing to say was that a good time was had much of the time by many of the people.
More specifically: the morning session, devoted to science, was fun. The evening entertainment, by Mr. Deity and his crew, was fantastic. In between, there was some debate/discussion on science vs. religion. Ken Miller is a biologist who believes strongly that science should be taught in science classrooms — he was an important witness in the Dover trial — and who happens also to be a Catholic. He gave an apologia for his belief that was frustrating and ultimately (if you ask me) wrong-headed, but at least qualified as reasonable academic discussion. He was followed by Nancey Murphy, a theologian who was much worse; she defended her belief in the efficacy of prayer by relating an anecdote in which she prayed to God to get a job, and the phone immediately rang with a job offer. (I am not, as Dave Barry says, making this up.) And Michael Shermer and Vic Stenger represented the atheist side, although both talks were also frustrating in their own ways.
But all of that just fades into the background when put into the same room as the sheer unadulterated looniness of the remaining speaker, Hugh Ross. Despite warnings, I didn’t really know anything about the guy before the conference began. The taxonomy of crackpots is not especially interesting to me; there are too many of them, and I’d rather engage with the best arguments for positions I disagree with than spend time mocking the worst arguments (although I’m not above a bit of mockery now and then).
So I was unprepared. For those of you fortunate enough to be blissfully unaware of Ross’s special brand of lunacy, feel free to stop reading now if you so choose. For the rest of you: man, this guy is nuts. And he’s not even the most nuts it’s possible to be — he’s an “old-earth” creationist, willing to accept that the universe is 14 billion years old and that the conventional scientific interpretation of the fossil record is generally right. Still: totally nuts.
Ross’ talk took two tacks. First, he explained to us how the Bible predicted that: (1) the universe started from an initial singularity; (2) it is now expanding; and (3) it is cooling down at it expands. The evidence for these remarkable claims? A long list of Bible verses! Well, not the verses themselves. Just the citations. So we couldn’t really tell what the verses themselves said. Except for poor Ken Miller, who was trying to salvage some last shred of dignity for his side of the debate, and had the perspicacity to look up one of the verses on his iPhone. (Praise be to technology!) I’m not sure which verse it was, but that’s okay, because they all say precisely the same thing. Here is Isaiah 45:12, in the New International Version:
It is I who made the earth
and created mankind upon it.
My own hands stretched out the heavens;
I marshaled their starry hosts.
What’s that? You don’t see the bold prediction of Hubble’s Law, practically ready for peer review? It’s right there, in the bit about “stretched out the heavens.” To the mind of a non-crazy person, this is a poetic way of expressing the fact that the dome of the sky reaches from one horizon to the other. To Hugh Ross, though, it’s a straightforward scientific prediction of the expansion of the universe.
Here is Ross in person, going through some of these same arguments:
(Yes, that video is embedded from “GodTube.com.”)
His second tack was to explain how our universe is finely-tuned for the existence of life. We’ve all heard this kind of claim, from real scientists as well as crackpots. But Ross and his clan take it to grotesque extremes, as detailed in the website for his Reasons to Believe ministry. Where, by the way, they don’t believe the LHC will destroy the world! Rather, it will “provide even new reasons to trust the validity of Scripture.” It would be nice if they would tell us what those reasons are ahead of time. Does Scripture predict low-energy supersymmetry? Large extra dimensions?
According to Reasons to Believe, the chance of life arising on a planet within the observable universe is only 1 in 10282 — or it would have been, if it weren’t for divine miracles. (Don’t tell them about there are 10500 vacua in string theory, it would ruin everything.) They get this number by writing down a long list of criteria that are purportedly necessary for the existence of life (“star’s space velocity relative to Local Standard of Rest”; “molybdenum quantity in crust”; “mass distribution of Oort Cloud objects”), then they assign probabilities to each, and cheerfully multiply them together. To the non-crackpot eye, most have little if any connection to the existence of life, and let’s not even mention that many of these are highly non-independent quantities. (You cannot calculate the fraction of “Sean Carroll”s in the world by multiplying the fraction of “Sean”s by the fraction of “Carroll’s. As good Irish names, they are strongly correlated.) It’s the worst kind of flim-flam, because it tries to cover the stench of nonsense by squirting liberal doses of scientific-smelling perfume. If someone didn’t know anything about the science, and already believed in an active God who made the universe just for us, they could come away convinced that modern science had vindicated all of their beliefs. And that’s not something any of us should sit still for.
There is a reason why all this is worth rehashing, as distasteful as it may be and as feeble as the arguments are. Namely: there is no reason whatsoever to invite such a person to speak at a conference that aspires to any degree of seriousness. You can invite religious speakers, and you can have a debate on the existence of God; all that is fine, so long as it is clearly labeled and not presented as science. But there’s never any reason to invite crackpots. The crackpot mindset has no legitimate interest in an open-minded discussion, held in good faith; their game is to take any set of facts or arguments and twist them to fit their pre-determined conclusions. It’s the opposite of the academic ideal. And it’s an insult to religious believers to have their point of view represented by crackpots.
Which, if you want to be excessively conspiratorial, might have been the point. Perhaps the conference organizers wanted to ridicule belief in God by having it defended by Hugh Ross, or perhaps they wanted to energize the skeptical base by exposing them to some of the horrors that are really out there. Still, it was inappropriate. If we non-believers are confident in our positions, we should engage with the most intelligent and open-minded exemplars of the other side. Shooting fish in a barrel is not a sport that holds anyone’s attention for very long.
*Re-reads the thread and shakes his head in wonderment*
“Where did the “unknown intelligence of some kind” came from?”
If we knew where it came from, it wouldn’t be an “unknown intelligence of some kind.”
Seriously. You atheists are going to have to come up with some better stuff.
Excerpt from the virtus dormitiva link that you obviously didn’t bother to read:
from the 1673 Moliére play Le Malade Imaginaire (The Hypochondriac), wherein a doctor explains that opium is a soporific “quiat est in eo / virtus dormitiva / cujus est natura / sensus assoupire” (“because there is a dormitive virtue in it whose nature is to cause the senses to become drowsy”). Explanations along these lines answer questions truthfully but vacuously.
Thus, “unknown intelligence of some kind” is neither a “statement” nor an “explanation”, just empty blather devoid of any meaning.
Okay,… now I know that you’re just pulling my leg: “Thus, “unknown intelligence of some kind” is neither a “statement” nor an “explanation”, just empty blather devoid of any meaning.
“unknown intelligence of some kind”= Five simple words.
Excerpt from the virtus dormitiva link that you obviously didn’t bother to read:
from the 1673 Moliére play Le Malade Imaginaire (The Hypochondriac), wherein a doctor explains that opium is a soporific “quiat est in eo / virtus dormitiva / cujus est natura / sensus assoupire” (“because there is a dormitive virtue in it whose nature is to cause the senses to become drowsy”). Explanations along these lines answer questions truthfully but vacuously. = “just empty blather devoid of any meaning.
Andy it seems that you ID people are experts at avoiding direct, simple, honest discussion. At least other theists are honest enough to propose ludicrous claims and stand by them openly with the “faith” excuse. You cannot even do that.
Of course I meant, “and”, not “Andy”. (That’s me!)
“Andy it seems that you ID people are experts at avoiding direct, simple, honest discussion.”
I don’t know who or what the heck you mean by “you ID people,” but, are you reading what you are writing?
“…avoiding direct, simple, honest discussion.”
Your discussion has been anything but direct, simple, and honest. Explain again how one instance of a genetic mutation results in a new branch-off species with a different number chromosomes from the original species.
Mike: Apes have 24 pairs of chromosomes. Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes. If Apes and Humans have a common ancestor as Darwin’s theory holds, we now have a mathematical problem. How do you get from 24 pairs of chromosomes to 23 pairs of chromosomes over a long, gradual, period of time? You either have 24, or you have 23. Which is it? 24 or 23?
I am trying to understand what or where is the mathematical problem. Is it,
a) Common ancestor has 24 pairs and over time apes remain at 24 pairs while humans reduce to 23 pairs?
b) Common ancestor has 23 pairs and over time, apes increase to 24 pairs while humans remain at 23 pairs?
Is it a mathematical problem to have scenario (a) or (b). Please explain to me what and where the problem is. And also why you call it a mathematical problem.
Mike: If it is true that us Humans (with 23 pairs of chromosomes) are a species that evolved from a common ancester of Humans and the Great Apes (Gorillas, Chimpanzees, etc. with 24 pairs of chormosomes) it had to happen all at once, and it had to happen at least twice and at the same time.
Under what scenario(s) do you envisage that “it had to happen all at once, and it had to happen at least twice and at the same time.”
Mike: You can’t ditch arithmetic. I’m sorry, but you can’t stand there and claim to be a scientist at the same time as you are scooting things under the rug with your foot.
I do not understand why it is an arithmetic problem, and I never claim to be a scientist. I am trying to understand what is the point of contention between you and Andyo on this issue. The discussion between both of you fly over my head and so I read your points and try to paraphrase them back to you to see if it is correctly paraphrased. With Andyo, he seems to think I did paraphrase it correctly ( of course he is at liberty to tell me otherwise if I have read his comment wrongly). With you it seems I fell way off the mark, and this is my further attempt to understand your point of view. Thank you for your patience to try to explain to me your point of view.
Mike, did you even read the links? It is explained right there. What exactly and specifically do you find there that doesn’t answer this “problem”? Yet you are still claiming the same thing. You are clearly an Intelligent Design believer. You can’t even accept that? Man up and tell us what you really think.
Not the good explanation, as for myself I am 61, retired and have an IQ of about 135 (been at Mensa).
It rather think this is the just the opposite reason, from a Cornell Study from 1999 called “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments”.
It’s a depressing study, with depressing findings:
– People tend to overestimate their own smarts.
– Stupid people tend to overestimate their smarts more than the truly smart do.
– Smart people tend to assume that everyone else is as smart as they are; they honestly can’t understand why dumber people just don’t “get it”, because it doesn’t occur to them that those people actually are dumb.
– Stupid people, in contrast, tend to not only regard themselves as smarter than everyone else, they tend to regard truly smart people as especially stupid. This holds true even when these people are shown empirical proof that they are less competent than those they deride.
This is an excerpt of God Is In The Wattles, please ignore the political arguments irrelevant to the discussion here, I only mean to refer to this about religiosity v/s stupidity.
Sounds more like a Mormon saying than a Buddhist one (all people ever born on earth?)
Good point anyway!
Love of whom for whom?
Love is a social emotion between people and even more specifically between people who share some form of group bonding, kinship, tribalism, nationalism, all *isms which appeal to union “against the enemy”.
Not only “love” isn’t always beneficial to the lovers nor the loved but it is always perverted by religions which appeal to “Love for God” or “Love from God” or even saints and gurus, pilgrimages and darshans.
This is emotional masturbation, i.e. eliciting an emotional response outside of proper context, just as ridiculous as fetishists who cum when handling a woman shoe.
Interested,
Again, these two links will answer exactly your questions.
Read the links, but I’ll quote here the part that goes right to your concerns (from the second link):
Read the whole thing, it also answers the ID proponents “problems” with evolution. The first link goes into number of chromosomes vary between species.
By the way, if humans are special for having 23 chromosomes, while the other apes have 24, then we are not so special after all, since many other species which have a different number of chromosomes than its cousins would also be special. And what makes “23” so special after all? The Jim Carrey movie?
Kevembuangga – “Not the good explanation, as for myself I am 61, retired and have an IQ of about 135 (been at Mensa).”
I never sat for MENSA and if I did, might probably score just average. Retired, that gives you lot of time. Regarding your picture, would you consider reading a book I have never read but been referred to “The Golden Bough”. I think it deals with myths of the world from ancient times to ? but it seems to be from all over the world.
I guess you see yourself as Plato’s “Guardians of society”, and thus you keep this watchful eye over the debate and you want it to bear fruit in the direction you have traversed. You might want to ask yourself how many people can read “Folk psychology even with a good dose of “holy” make up give rise to disastrous opinions and decisions, see the conundrums exposed in Breakdown of Will (more details in the précis).” I saw one look at it and said silently to myself, “That’s heavy … too much for my mind. I do not wish to read and absorb or try to fathom that out”. You might want to revisit Plato and see what he expects of his guardians.
Personally, I traversed a tough road to understand my own meaning, and still work in progress and realize how precious that commodity is, and how faith and modern world can bring challenges that seem un-surmountable. I am 12 years your junior. That still makes me 1 shy of half a century.
As a society that started with early Christian settlers and their independent streak of reading the Bible on their own, than taught to them by the Catholic priests, the continued trend of that independence and seeking God on their own, marches on. Thus the across the nation, school boards debate and attempt to change the curriculum to include vestiges of ID. The sheer numbers and the mode of faith, requires a sensible and rational mode of converging faith and science in a way that respects both disciplines, for while there are those who swing to science and jettison faith, there are also those who seek to preserve both, and the mode of achieving that has to be mapped out, not the ID mode, but some mode.
What this mode is, is what this debate is all about. That is the common ground of this thread. To do that, one has to understand what exactly is this ID mode, and why ID mode is not science mode while recognizing ID adherents’ faith, for onto that is pegged their meaning of life.
As it is ( or appears to be) your meaning to devote your retirement years to serve as Plato’s Guardian, unpaid, save that, you know this will pave the way for the better future you see possible, for each and many and the nation, it is also the meaning of others to live out the commitment to their faith.
I once read M Scott Peck who illustrated that Christian faith is surrender, a heart approach. I think that makes sense, that those who do invite and accept God to their life, open a new window and live in those grounds. For those of us who have not opened that window and lived in those grounds, but as spectators, how can we understand what is the commitment and meaning, for we can only understand our commitment and own self designated meaning.
Like Riemann math’s 10 or 11 dimensions (i only refer to it’s mention in the book by Kaku, not my own understanding of it!) faith, humanly speaking, exists in a separate dimension from scientific inquiry/knowledge. References in the Bible which may or may not be construed to apply to accepted science should be treated carefully. Lack of this realization is what causes stupid things like the book in a Sunday school library promoting the idea that T-Rex lived in the Garden with Adam, Eve, and the Man Upstairs and ate fruit. I actually saw that, it is not a figment!
UGH! bad pun not previously noticed!
That said, here’s mine. The disclaimer/spoiler is that I am passionate about both the present state of “wood and marble” as it is propagated on Science Channel and blogs, etc, and my faith which I totally recognize as foundational to my views. What I find delicious is that the two, to me, agree(!)
I would only say two things to explain:
1. Christians believe fairly well, but don’t perceive well very often at all. They tend to ASS/U/ME so many things based on biblical ref’s that aren’t really said in the bible,or even by the verses they quote. IOW, they are right about There is a GOD and He loves me, but wrong in nearly every other thing they say.
2. OK, it’s a Bible verse, read it:
The meaning I refer to is calling things that didn’t exist into being. By the act of calling things; that is how the creation came into being. To me, this plainly is the big bang. I don’t even think I’m being simplistic. I just think it is elegant, both on the science side, and on the spiritual side. YMMV, dudes and dudettes.
Missed plugging in the verse:
As it is written, “I have appointed you a father of many nations” in the sight of God whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls the things not being as being.
Romans 6:4
I always like it when people make the old “life is too statistically unlikely” argument. It tells you straight away that they have absolutely no clue about probabilities and how they work.
Ross even provides numbers. Without even bothering to look at whether they make sense, or were just pulled out of a bodily orifice, victory can be immediately declared.
If life has a non-zero probability, no matter how small that probability may be, the probability of life occurring at some point somewhere in the universe is 1.
Andyo, “Again, these two links will answer exactly your questions.”
1) It is one link, the one you had furnished and I have glanced through and attempted a paraphrase. Based on the paraphrase and understanding gathered then, I have on Friday sent an email to a Catholic Jesuit priest astrophysicist, as below.
2) On Fri, 17 Oct 2008, I sent an email out –
Can you ask someone to help answer this question, what is the position of
Science on the chromosome count of the common ancestor, and how scientifically ( process) one descendant the apes have 24 pairs and the other man has 23 pairs.
Is there any evidence that the common ancestor had 24 pairs, with the
number stepping down for man, and remaining the same for apes? Or is it the common ancestor had 23 pairs and man’s remained the same while ape’s increased by 1 pair.
Or is it, it was 20 pairs for common ancestor and man had 3 more pairs
while apes had 4 more pairs.
Is the state of science, on this question, at theory level or is there
evidence for it?
What is the current magisterium’s view on it?
What is the current scientific view on it?
What is the current scientific view on it among clergical scientists?
Thanks.
Sincerely,
__________________________________________________________
3) Today I am pleased to have a response as such-
This is just to confirm that I have received your
interesting questions and am pursuing a local (to Tucson) expert to
answer you. You might receive this directly rather than via me, since
he has your original message.
Kind regards,
Chris Corbally S.J.
This is the reply I obtained on Monday Oct 24th evening. This is the best I can do. Father Corbally can be reached at http://clavius.as.arizona.edu/vo/R1024/CCorbally.html Father Stoeger can be reached at http://clavius.as.arizona.edu/vo/R1024/WStoeger.html
Dear Bella,
Your inquiry about the ape and human chromosome number was kindly forwarded to me by Dr. Lindell (via Dr. Stoeger and Father Corbally).
Specifically, you asked if the common ancestor of apes and humans had 23 or 24 pairs of chromosomes–a very reasonable scientific question. It is generally
accepted among geneticists that the human count of 23 is the result of the
fusion of two ape medium-sized chromosomes to form our chromosome number 2–the second biggest of our chromosomes. All the great apes (chimps, orangs, gorillas) have 24 pairs, suggesting by rule of parsimony that we humans are the exception in having a reduced number (rather than all the apes having gained a chromosome). This conclusion is consistent with detailed study of the banding patterns of the respective ape chromosomes that are preserved on the fused human chromosome. Lastly, scientists are agreed that humans and chimpanzees last shared a common ancestor 6-8 million years ago, so the chromosomal fusion happened sometime after the separation of the human lineage from the common ancestor.
I hope this is of help to you.
Best regards,
Dieter
H. Dieter Steklis, Ph.D.
Interim Associate Dean of Academic Affairs
and Adjunct Professor of Psychology
The University of Arizona South
and
Professor Emeritus of Primatology
Rutgers University
The State University of New Jersey
Interested,
It is pretty much the same of what the link I provided said.
What bothers me is that you’re not only going to religious “authority” for your science information. What bothers me further is that you are also going to these religious “authorities” to confirm or reject information coming from scientists.
As you can see here, they at least were honest enough to forward your question to a (presumably) scientist.
You don’t need the acceptance of your religious “authorities” to get information about the world. If it’s about biology, ask a biologist directly. If you’re not satisfied, ask another one. If you see opposing conflicting views, ask again. Ask a third one. Think for yourself. Consider the evidence and arguments presented by them. Religious “authorities” have no more authority in matters of real world knowledge than any other layman, including you and me.
You’re lucky that for catholics evolution is not a problem. That’s why they could give you a rather straight, non-controversial answer. The only ones raising “problems” with chromosome numbers (and the eye, and the bacterial flagellum) are Intelligent Design Creationists, of the school of Michael Behe and Dembski. But what if you asked about homosexuality, for example? They probably (in my experience, I don’t pretend to assume the honesty of your acquaintances) wouldn’t have been as straightforward with their answer.
I am too late already for this discussion, but I do have something for you Sean…
“And it is We Who have constructed the heaven with might, and it is We Who are expanding it.”[Qur’an 51:47].
Is this Hubble’s law at action?
P.S. (In case you doubt it, find someone who understands Arabic, ask him to look this phrase up in the Qur’an and have it translated literally for you. The clarity of the statement is shocking)
By the way, Interested, I just caught this,
There were two links (one under “two” and one under “links”). Go up and read them, it’s not a very hard read, and it’s very interesting, at least for someone asking the kinds of questions you asked.
I love random quotes taken out of context, so here is some of me doing so.
Note that these are Qu´ran 51:47 (or 51:46, seems theres some uncertainty).
“With power and skill did We construct the Firmament: for it is We Who create the vastness of [s]pace.”
– http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Holy_Qur%27an/Adh-Dhariyat
-“We have built the heaven with might, and We it is Who make the vast extent (thereof)”
– http://quranexplorer.com/quran/
-“With power and skill did We construct the Firmament: for it is We Who create the vastness of [s]pace.”
– http://www.islamicity.com/mosque/QURAN/51.htm
So we have a very old text which may or may not be translated into something which corresponds with a law of physics which has not been know at the time that book was written and a brain excelling at finding patterns even where they do not exist.
Andyo, I did read your links. They are not “answers” as you claim. They are just arguments, and very flawed arguments at that because they require enormous leaps of faith. The following is quoted from my own post #94, so that you can see that your so-called answer links are not new arguments to me.
My argument is that this beneficial fusion of two chromosomes into one would have to occur twice at the same time, in two separate offspring, one male and one female, and that these two offspring would have to form a mating pair, and be the individual first members of a new species line running the new chromosome configuration.
Andyo’s argument is that the actual deformation of the chromosome need only happen once, and then will eventually spread through succeeding generations until it meets up with itself and begins the new species from multiple points of origination. I find this argument flawed because in every case where there is chromosome malformation in only one side of the pair, there is always a devastating if not fatal syndrome of some sort accompanying it. That is what we observe. We have never observed a new species arising from another over a long, slow, gradual period of time. From PZ Meyers:
Life probably started with no chromosomes? That is one incredible leap of faith that I just can’t make. The oldest fossils of living things are 3 billion year old blue-green algae. Blue-green algae is still around today, and it has chromosomes. There is absolutely no evidence of any kind that shows that life could be possible without chromosomes. Meyers call this an “irrelevant misconception?” The idea that life requires chromosomes is a misconception? I don’t think so. The true fact of the matter is, chromosomes are so essential to life, that life just could not possibly begin or exist without them.
The Darwinian evolutionist (i.e. atheist) has to make this ‘leap of faith’ and many others in order to maintain the illusion that life could spontaneously begin and develop into the vast diversity that we see today, all guided by nothing other than blind random, accidental chance. I find that a lot harder to believe than simply not ruling out as a scientific principle, the idea that the Universe was created for the purpose of supporting life. There is no evidence that rules out the possibility, but what we now know about chromosomes essentially disproves the Darwinian theory as to the full cause for how life originated.
Arbitrarily ruling out the possibility that the Universe is a creation, is exactly the same as arbitrarily ruling out the possibility that the Earth is not a stationary object. When Aristotle and Ptolemy ruled out the possibility of a moving Earth, they blinded mankind and mainstream science for over 1,800 years. When you stubbornly refuse to look at the obvious evidence against Darwin, you are doing the same thing as Tycho Brahe when he tried to prove Ptolemy correct in the face of observable evidence in support of the Heliocentric model.
Arguments making claims such that a creator is unnecessary all require enormous leaps of faith. The theory of infinite parallel universes to explain life still has the same problem as a one universe reality. How did this Universe begin? How did the infinite number of parallel universes begin? I have to mention here, that there is absolutely no evidence of any parallel universes, and belief is such would be more absurd than not ruling out the possibility of a creator when there is observable evidence to suggest that we might be a creation.
This is the same silly argument for every point about “scientific” proofs for ID or God’s hand:
“We are too stupid to figure out how it can be therefore God is at work”
We know that you are too stupid, nothing new here, not having the “perfect” explanation at hand doesn’t mean that there could not be one.
For a paleolithic or even medieval man a mobile phone would be God’s work too or may be the Devil’s?
To compensate for the poor value of arguing with religious numbskulls I suggest having a look at some sensible conversation between intelligent people on Religion v/s Science The distinction is between the universe and our interpretation of the universe. (though it is in the context of a seemingly unrelated topic)
For one thing, I have never mentioned religion other than to say that I don’t believe in it, so calling me a “religious numbskull” is rather idiotic. Knocking religion is a classic, (and at this point), juvenile example of the straw man argument.
Not ruling out the possibility of a creator, especially when there is utterly no logical reason to rule it out, is not the same thing as throwing your hands up and giving up the search for the truth. It also has absolutely nothing to do with, in any way, shape, or form, religion or religious beliefs.
Your last two posts are prime examples of how false beliefs distort the perceptions. Aristotle’s and Ptolemy’s belief in a stationary Earth caused them to believe in things that are easily disproved. Your belief in atheism does the same thing. Your false belief distorts your reality so badly that you don’t even recognize that atheism is a belief, and you will attempt to argue the opposite.
Darwin didn’t know about chromosomes. The only thing that can create chromosomes are chromosomes. Now that we can map the actual numeric code on the gene sequences, it’s pretty difficult to try to claim that the first chromosome came into existence through random chance. So instead of searching all directions for a solution, the atheist/Darwinist has to make up an utterly unbelievable story about life originally not having chromosomes, and that chromosomes evolved. Even if it was possible for there to be life capable of reproducing without chromosomes, how did that first cell begin? Next you’ll say that the first life didn’t have a cell, and that cells evolved.
The fossil record has completely failed to show any transitional forms or small gradual changes over a long period of time. The atheist/Darwinist has to cover this by patching together the idea of “punctuated equilibrium” which seems to say that Darwin doesn’t exactly work.
Not having the “perfect” explanation at hand does not mean that you have to stick to beliefs that just couldn’t possibly be true. The only reason you refuse to question Darwin is because it would violate your own religious beliefs in atheism.