That's true with all creationist apologist. The reason is that there is no positive argument for creationism, just attacks on its alternative. Where is your constructive argument for creationism that doesn't refer to the scientific alternative? Notice that the scientific case for abiogenesis makes no reference to gods or divine creationism, and is not a criticism of the religious position.
How do think it supports your case to request evidence, have is lavishly bestowed upon you, and then repeat that no evidence has been provided?
I'll tell you. It reveals that you don't use evidence to decide what is true about the world. You decide what you prefer to be true by faith, and then fail to see whatever evidence contradicts that position. That's how the faith based confirmation bias works. Once somebody has accepted a notion on faith, a filter forms that allows only that which seems to support the faith-based idea through. Nothing else can be seen.
As counterintuitive as this may seem, there is an excellent description of the phenomenon from geologist and former young earth creationist Glenn Morton, now an old earth creationist, of his own experience engulfed in such a confirmation bias. He anthropomorphizes the experience by equating it to a demon like Maxwell's demon, one which sits at the portal to his inner mind and decides what will enter and what will not. This is from Morton:
"
When I was a YEC, I had a demon that did similar things for me that Maxwell's demon did for thermodynamics. Morton's demon was a demon who sat at the gate of my sensory input apparatus and if and when he saw supportive evidence coming in, he opened the gate. But if he saw contradictory data coming in, he closed the gate. In this way, the demon allowed me to believe that I was right and to avoid any nasty contradictory data ... The demon makes its victim feel very comfortable as there is no contradictory data in view ... one thing that those unaffected by this demon don't understand is that the victim is not lying about the data. The demon only lets his victim see what the demon wants him to see and thus the victim, whose sensory input is horribly askew, feels that he is totally honest about the data."
Is the victim of this phenomenon really this incapacitated by it? I find Morton sincere and credible. If he says that he was blind to this process, as counterintuitive as that claim may seem, I believe him. And this is how I now view most creationists telling me that they see no evidence even when it is handed to them. I think that they are wrong, but not lying. They really cannot see the evidence. And from this vantage point, they find the rational skeptic's position unbelievable and insincere. They wonder what it is that they think we consider evidence, in this case, for abiogenesis, and continue to say that no such thing exists.
Isn't that part of debate? You make positive assertions here that others find flawed. Rebuttal should not be viewed as attack, but rather as dissent.
Isn't that the basis of your faith? Don't you believe the claims of others that the words written down in the Christian Bible are the words of a god? Aren't you believing whoever Mark, Luke, John and Matthew were that Jesus said such-and-such?
When I say that I believe Newton or Einstein even without being able to understand the mathematics needed to understand their arguments, this is not blind faith. I have evidence that they are correct. The Apollo space flights that took man to the moon and back relied exclusively on Newtonian mechanics. Those men reached their target, walked on it, and returned home. What more evidence do I need that I can consider Newton reliable?
With Einstein, we have his prediction about the bending of the path of distant starlight grazing past the solar limb as it comes to earth, something not neither predicted by Newton's work nor suspected by anybody else. This phenomenon makes the star appear to be somewhere other than where it is known to be. The prediction was confirmed in 1919 by Eddington during a solar eclipse. Relativity theory has since been used to explain the pertubatiion of mercury's orbit as its long access precesses around the sun, and has been put to pragmatic use in new technology such as GPS devices.
It takes no faith to believe that work of such men is fundamentally sound
What is risky is believing the alleged knowledge of others on faith.
I've read enough from creationists that I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't be missing anything tantalizing if I never read another word from such a source, so I don't.
But if you think that you have an idea from one of these sources that you think deserves serious attention, please summarize it here. If you don't, please disregard the request.
You're describing faith-based thought. The reason and evidence based thinker believes compelling arguments and demonstrations as I indicated above when discussing Newton and Einstein. We believe the evidence of their successes.
The sine qua non of a correct idea about reality is that it maps some aspect of nature in a way that allows one to predict and thus at times control outcomes. We know that Newton's ideas are slightly incomplete since Einstein showed us how and why, but they are still useful in the main in the way I just described.. These laws made it possible to launch the New Horizons probe from earth and expect it to rendezvous with Pluto several years later. In that way, the outcome of the launch could be predicted and controlled sufficiently to result in a successful mission.
Contrast that with wrong ideas, such as the astrological principle that the lives of human beings could be predicted or controlled by heavenly bodies according to their positions. This is an idea that was never once able to be put to any practical use. It doesn't map reality accurately, and this its predictions are wrong.
Now look at evolutionary theory and creationism. The former is a system of ideas that unifies mountains of data from a multitude of sources, accurately makes predictions about what can and cannot be found in nature, provides a rational mechanism for evolution consistent with the known actions of nature, accounts for both the commonality of all life as well as biodiversity, and has had practical applications that have improved the human condition in areas like medicine and agriculture. Those are the credentials of a correct idea.
Creationism, by contrast, can do none of that. It is a sterile idea with no predictive power and no pragmatic value, exactly what we expect from incorrect ideas like astrology.
Abiogenesis is not as far along yet as evolutionary science, so it isn't useful for much yet. It is still not yet a scientific theory, just a hypothesis being fleshed in at a substantial rate by ongoing scientific research - research which keeps finding new evidence of chemical combining to form the biological macromolecules characterisitic of biological sytems. In the meantime, creation research is still languishing at its starting mark searching for its first finding better explained by positing a god than unguided natural processes.
This too is evidence of which of these two ideas maps reality more closely. The scientific path of investigation continues revealing links in a chain from simple chemistry to life, while the religious idea remains sterile.
Incidentally, were you planning on addressing
my rebuttal to your incredulity argument about how unlikely abiogenesis seems to you, and why positing a god to solve the dilemma is a logical error? Did you want to try to identify a logical fallacy or other error in my counterargument, or are you satisfied that it is sound? I'll assume so until I hear otherwise from you.
I hope that you won't choose bad faith argumentation and merely repeat the already refuted claim without addressing that refutation.
That's not my position. I don't expect abiogenesis to ever be proven correct. The best we can hope for even if it is correct is to show one or more thermodynamically sound paths that nature could have taken between simple chemistry and life. Our response to an incomplete theory is that unlike ID research, it is growing every year, which is consistent with what would be expected if unguided abiogenesis is possible.
