[split] a discussion on origins sparked by "The Order of Things"

[busker]

You are just reiterating Mark’s argument.  But it is the same fallacy.  It is the Argument from Authority.  Just because a really smart and successful person believes in a god does not mean they are correct, just because they are smart and correct on other matters. 

Not at all. I was only picking a counter example to show that someone in the modern age could reconcile their faith in a deity and their science, since your argument was that Newton didn't know about DNA (effectively).

If a Nobel Prize winner believes in a god, that has no bearing whatsoever on the truth of the assertion.  The only thing that has bearing is the evidence they present itself for their belief.  If they have evidence for god’s existence, then present it, have it challenged, replicated, peer-reviewed, etc. and then accept ANOTHER Noble Prize for it.  Otherwise, it’s just an unsupported assertion.

Why should I accept that the null hypothesis is 'there is no god'? The null hypothesis can be anything. The only thing it can't be, is something that's already been disproved, or which is strongly contraindicated by current knowledge. So, for instance, I can't believe in a flat earth. I can't believe in gods dwelling atop Olympus. I can't believe in the Genesis account where land plants appeared before fish. I probably should not believe in the resurrection of a guy named Yehoshua. I probably should not believe that everything that Mohammed uttered, including why he could marry his adoptive daughter-in-law, was inspired. Or that anything he said, was.

But just like Andrew Wiles 'believed' in the truth of Fermat's last theorem - which is why he spent the better part of this life trying to solve it - and Jayant Narlikar 'believes' in the steady state theory even today because it is more elegant; likewise String Theory, you can 'believe' that there is some sort of a god or higher power without there being evidence for it. In fact, it can be argued that there will never be any evidence for it, just as it is possible there will never be any evidence for String Theory.

Because I wonder (and I do not mean this as racist, because I discuss other races below), do you think someone named Mohammad Abdus Salam born in Jhang, Pakistan in 1926 to Chaudhry Muhammad Hussain and Hjira Hussain really “weighed” in on all of the religions of the world and picked the one “true” one to him after hours, weeks, months of careful study?  We can only speculate, but what do think his chances were of being Christian or Atheist at that time and place, in that environment?  Would you even give the odds at 1%?

There was no Pakistan in 1926, only undivided India. But you are confusing being culturally Muslim, with actually believing in an Allah. Why would you assume that those who are culturally Muslim can't be atheists? In fact, the culturally Christians being atheists is a relatively recent phenomenon, only a couple of hundreds of years old. Atheistic attitudes in the east go back a long way.

And just because we’d LIKE for something to be true, does not mean it ACTUALLY is.  I’d like for there to be a million dollars in my bank account, but that does not mean it is true.  In order to believe something as factually true, there must be evidence to support it.

Again, you have arbitrarily chosen a null hypothesis that 'there is no god' and need evidence to abandon that hypothesis. That is your choice.
Remember Andrew Wiles. Or any meaningful science for that matter. All proper scientists have faith in an elegant solution (that's the whole reason for their being in science). Those who don't, are dull drones buzzing away for a paycheque, such as petroleum geologists.