Every living cellular or multicellular organism today arose via purely natural processes and this extends all the way back to the LUCA.
Not in my case. Science has made the concept of God almost irrelevant.
We mustn’t also fail to ask, which creator?
If this LUCA ever existed, in order to fit scientific criteria or calculations, how many genes should a LUCA have? Given that there are now about 21k human genes
Read the first article you linked, you will find the answer to your question.
And does it live on the second floor?
+10 points for the Suzanne Vega reference. 
Easy to say, but impossible to prove.
”… they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man or birds or animals or reptiles” (Romans 1:21-23).
Why should that matter to you, an atheist?
Isn’t a God who could create life just from the big bang, some time, and then via evolution, without needing to intercede again to form life, actually be a much better and more omnipotent God and better designer than one who needs to intervene in His creation again later on to form life?? Particularly one that needs to reset creation multiple times - eg Noah’s Flood, and the Second Coming.
So, far from thinking highly of God, I think young earth/progressive creationists think too little of their God.
Clearly, us evolutionists can at least conceive of a God and universe where abiogenesis can occur (and one where God does not need to repeatedly reset His creation); which an omnipotent God should be able to make a reality.
There is good evidence for LUCA. Take a peek:
@evograd gives a less technical, but accurate summary of the study details here:
Quoting bible verses won’t help you against everyday facts. No one seeks God’s help at the first sign of a headache, you reach for the aspirin bottle first, neither does anyone invite a priest or prophet to pray for someone epileptic anymore. That’s what I meant.
I am not an atheist. And even if I were, it would still matter because irrelevant conflicts have arisen over it in the past and still do in the present. Its probably unresolvable, implying that conflicts deriving from it will never cease.
Oh, until very recently you described yourself as a “Catholic Atheist”, but now you’re a “Catholic Agnostic”. Interesting.
The moderators set that title. Don’t blame @Michael_Okoko for a bad initial choice.
I’m fairly sure that was @Patrick. A search of the forum finds 17 hits for him describing himself in that way, but none for @Michael_Okoko.
Addendum: if you mean this post, it does not actually say that he’s an atheist, only that he was “taking off [his] raging atheist hat”, but that he’s “not saying I want to be an atheist”.
Spot on. I still believe in God, but as I have said, I admit I don’t know if he is really real. The second part is where my agnosticism lies. I am just being honest with the actual state of events.
I like “provisional truth” myself. I’m no philosopher of science but as a fan of the enterprise I often find that a lot of the confusion around science comes from folks who see science as a static set of facts (thanks, U.S. educational system) rather than a constantly evolving and self-critical project that is always challenging current models and looking for better answers. We humans like to feel like we have it all settled, I guess.
I think it goes beyond the US educational system. I got that impression about science in Nigeria. It came crashing down during my final year undergraduate research, when I got somewhat exposed to the realities of scientific research.
I believe in the existence of God too, but I don’t “know” he exists because I can’t prove that he exists … but I don’t call myself agnostic.
Personally, I find the term “provisional truth” to be rather nonsensical. Truth cannot be “provisional” - truth is truth and cannot change; it cannot become non-truth.
A much better term is “provisional understanding”.
11 posts were split to a new topic: On the Catholic Church
I like that!
I don’t know how old you are, but when I served on a committee developing the science curriculum for our school district in ~2007, I was pleasantly surprised to see that all the available textbooks had a heavy basis on inquiry.
Yet you reject the claims of the Catholic Church regarding evolution. Interesting.