for doubters of God's existance

Posted By: ICEman

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/16/06 14:35

xD Marco.. The reason why i said they dont have to be capable of magic is that..
ok..its stage magic to us..but its their current science... the laws of physics go well beyond our understanding, and there is much about the physical universe we dont know to be science fact...simply because we havent been out there to see and observe it into our science..and by much I mean eons worth. So there is a nice margin of things we would see as magic.

Yes.. a "God" or whatever created this universe is capable of...quite a bit of activities well beyond our comprehension, but that is because it has greater applicational knowledge of math and science.. not because it is magical. Perhaps I am wrong too, but where you expect there to be a thundering voice and lightening bolts, I expect there to be a being no more collosal than you or I... tho much wiser, and a hellovalot smarter... who simply knows how to manipulate his existance and that of the things around him because he has taken the time to learn so much information and mastered it to a point where..everything he does seems godlike because he is capable of so much that we are not.

@ Phemox..

Yup... strings of coincidence and questionable correlations.. aimed at supporting a specific partisan religious viewpoint that, my friend, is religious science for you. It's not science so much as it is trying to link religiously referenced caused with physically real effect.

:| Silly me..I always thought hurricanes were caused by troilcal pressure differences in tropical waters that develops into high pressure systems of storm... and mobilizes along currents to fed itself... and I always thought mines collapsed because of their generally weak structures being tested by said miners digging around in them.

Who knew it was God playing Sim City with our lives all along?

Posted By: mpdeveloper_B

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/18/06 03:26

a person can feel God's presence if he only tries, you have to first believe in him and i believe in God fully, he is the creator of all that their is, he created all emotions all states, all statures, all that you see, is part of God, and it proves his existance, mankind believes that HE (man) has grown to great heights that he is all powerful, mankind believes that he created himself almost, however he is wrong, only God has done these things, and one thing about evolution. Evolution disproves itself, it is proven, scientifically that an animal has to live off another one, all organisms have to, so it couldn't have started with one organism and that organism split and evolved, because for those two organisms, they would have to evolve at the exact same time, the exact milisecond in order to be able to live off one another, and the single organism, must have been able to feed off another organism to begin with, before it could even evolve, else, it would have died out, and there would have been no evolution and no creatures, evolution is a lie.

I am a scientific christian, i look at things by both point of views, and by the way, if something didn't get mixed reviews, then everyone would give the same opinion, which doesn't happen, that book is one of the best books, that will turn any non-christian around, and if you do not believe me, then you read it, i challenge you and look at it the way the scientist did.

Posted By: mpdeveloper_B

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/18/06 03:32

i'm not getting offensive about this at all, i'm quite calm about the subject, people believe what they believe because they have God-given freewill. which is the only reason debates like this go on, because one person believes differently, that's being a human, i don't try to convert people, i just spread the word, after that, my job is done.

Posted By: mpdeveloper_B

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/18/06 03:40

@scramsax and all who think it's impossible to prove God's existance scientifically: if you believe that it's impossible to prove his existance scientifically, then you are wrong, many a scientist was converted after finding explicit evidence of God's existance, however, like all scientists, when they returned with news, their superiors disagree and would not believe in "such nonsense". They through away the thought that a higher power created every thing a mans hand touches, therefore, man is afraid of having a higher person over them, he believes that he rules his own life, and wastes what small time he has on earth. man may be "living it up" in his lifetime, but as just a man his dreams and visions die with him, however a man who has a higher power on his side, lives his life and is known for the life he lives, and most of them discover what most people don't see, whether you believe it or not, science started with christianity.

Posted By: Scramasax

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/18/06 08:54

@Moonslayer101
God can't be proven scientifically because its a matter of faith. Discoveries and inventions alike can't substantiate God's existence, but can be used as fulcrums to lever one's argument in one direction or another.

A simple test of my point, is can someone give me proof? In all my reading I haven't found any. All proof I've ever read or heard are simple circular arguments were one point relies on another.

I'm not saying there isn't a God, to do so would be too arrogant on my part, but their isn't anything even as concrete as a cheese burger. If there were, people would be packing in, getting super-size combo meals of divinity, at their local church franchise.

Also science didn't start with Christianity, but probably when homo habilis first discovered sharp rocks and used them as tools.

Posted By: mpdeveloper_B

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/18/06 15:37

well if you don't believe that he can be proved scientifically, then you are wrong, because there is still proof muddled away in ruins on this earth, things that prove the existance by proving other things mentioned by the bible, once again, you will have to read the book to understand what i'm talking about.

Posted By: mpdeveloper_B

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/18/06 16:06

i agree what is wrong with most christians, they won't do things for themselves and they just pray, with no action at all, this is where most christians go wrong, God doesn't only want prayer, he wants you to do something about it. like if someone wants to lose weight, then they may pray to God about losing it, but will continue eating the way they do until they get heart disease, and so on. Also another problem with some christians and scientists is thet they believe what they believe and can't anyone tell them any different, this is wrong as well, alot of things happened because of this, first off christianity excused science and visa-versa, because each thought that the ideas of the other was preposterous. Theologists thought that there was no way that the earth was as old as it could be, and that the world was created in seven days flat, wrong, science is right about the earth being old as it is, the only reason theologists believe that it was in seven days is because the "english" translation has that in it, when the original hebrew says that God "began to create", not "created the earth in seven days". Scientists disagree in the proof of God at all, and throw away the idea that some almighty power could never have created the earth science is wrong in disbelieving what proof has come about, you may be wandering what proof, but once again if you read the book then your look on "God can't be proven scientifically" will be proven wrong.

for example: the way the bible is worded

when the bible is read in hebrew, and since hebrew is a numeric language there is a number for each word. in the bible only the things that are stressed by God as perfect things have perfect squares on the number.

i will not go into much detail in that example as it is in the book.

if you want a cheaper version of the book here it is on half.com(not the $26 one):
http://product.half.ebay.com/A-Scientific-Approach-to-Christianity_W0QQprZ579099QQtgZinfo

conclusion: both science and christianity can be wrong in the way they dismiss what they hear from one another. all context above is explained in the book, BY SCIENCE.

Posted By: PHeMoX

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/26/06 22:14

Quote:

for example: the way the bible is worded

when the bible is read in hebrew, and since hebrew is a numeric language there is a number for each word. in the bible only the things that are stressed by God as perfect things have perfect squares on the number.

conclusion: both science and christianity can be wrong in the way they dismiss what they hear from one another. all context above is explained in the book, BY SCIENCE.

Square numbers in the bible should prove something? Come on, they have to come up with something better than that, write the same text down a tiny bit different and it would be impossible to make such a claim. I'm 100% sure that a lot of things have changed over time because of translating and re-writing the stories. The content of the bible most probably started out as an oral tradition and the bible is only a collection of a few of those stories, hence the existence of apocrif texts and thus it's form doesn't matter nor proof anything. And in my opinion, it's content doesn't proof anything either, not even the existance of a person like Jesus Christ. I know there are some more indications that a person called Jesus probably lived it that time, yet that name was very common, it's like being called 'John' in the USA, and even then it doesn't prove that the Jesus from the Bible has infact done all those miracles and has said all those 'wise' words....

The only thing the author of the book does, is throwing a lot of examples/arguments in favor of the existance of a God around, claims it to be scientifically proven and then hopes his books are getting sold.

If any text written down proves anything other than the existance of the text itself, then I will go and write down in a book that I'm God, and that you should obey, because I'm almighty and have done a lot of miracles or at least the power to do so, and this all is true because I say so and because it is written, so again it is true. Uuuhm don't you think that sounds very silly? Well, that's exactly my problem with the bible, or any religious text for that matter.

Cheers

Posted By: Marco_Grubert

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/27/06 21:27

Quote:

that book is one of the best books, that will turn any non-christian around, and if you do not believe me, then you read it, i challenge you and look at it the way the scientist did.

Even though I missed your response as to what specifically you found great about this book, you seem to be convinced about its effectiveness. So how about an experiment then:
You send me the book and I promise to read it. Afterwards I will tell you whether it "turned me around" or not. Are you up for it ?

Posted By: Anonymous

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/27/06 23:13

I like what someone said before: "Let's keep this discussion on the scientific." I'd love to do that, because hearing everyone attack my faith from a secular viewpoint just goes to show that a debate on religion will never end. No one is going to switch sides in a debate like this.

But first, I'd like to make a few points to the christians in this thread. How can you, as someone who believes the Bible is true, say Katrina is a direct result of our sins? If I remember, Jesus told us not to judge unless we wanted to be judged in the same way. If the purpose of a hurricane is to wipe sinners off the planet, then I think everyone (including you and myself) needs to have our own personal tornado touch down right on top of our heads. Its simply not our place to make a claim like that.

Manslayer, I'm not going to try and tell you what to do. But I don't understand why christians feel the need to reconcile dogmatic scientific beliefs with the word of God.

The Bible does not say that God 'started creating earth' in six days. It outlines each and every action of the creation, and ends by saying upon which day that action took place. There's no need to appease 'scientists' on this issue, the Bible has enough science in it to back itself up.

The earth is not billions of years old. The moment you accept that, you also accept that, in spite of God, there is evolution. Which means you're saying we were born out of death. God created the earth free of death, and we introduced death, as well as suffering, etc. through our sin. By saying something as simple as 'the earth is billions of years old' you're actually saying a whole lot more and you destroy the foundation of the Bible.

God created the earth and said, "It was good." As in, there was nothing bad upon it. Satan tempted us into sin and we brought death and suffering upon ourselves. Which answers everyone's problem with a God that would 'neglect' his own people. You want to have it both ways? Free will, and no free will. Doesn't work that way.

That doesn't mean God has turned his back on us. In fact, its the other way around. It all started with us turning our backs on him. You can't blame him for that. I'm sorry that there's suffering, I really am. But we all go through it. Thanks to my faith in Jesus, I know that this is just a stage. My suffering is temporary, and compared to the afterlife my time on earth will be nothing but a whisper, and I'll realize that my suffering was nothing in the long run. My faith offers me eternal life. What does faith in evolution, or that we came from aliens, offer? Just more of the same, and then eventually death.

Quote:

"God can't be proven scientifically because its a matter of faith. Discoveries and inventions alike can't substantiate God's existence, but can be used as fulcrums to lever one's argument in one direction or another."

I beg to differ. The only problem this country has is that our scientists have decided that no matter what the evidence offers, they will not believe in God. Even if their theory of evolution collapses under its own weight. In turn, I'd claim that not only is a lot of science based on faith, but that its faith without any real evidence.

I'm not going to defend God's existence. I'd rather kick the stool out from under evolution, like so many people do to God in debates. Its not my job to make anyone believe in God. That's God's job. All I can do is show you why scientists have no answers for the origin of the universe, or of life.

The Big Bang. Something from nothing. That should be all I have to say. I can ask where the original matter came from, and you can say some other primordial state of the universe, but then all you're doing is delaying the inevitable question: where did it all come from? You can't get something from nothing. In fact, the Big Bang literally represents a miracle. So why is the miracle of some magical Big Bang so much harder to believe in than God? Which sounds more logical to you?

In fact, science has to break many of the fundamental laws of physics just to bring a universe into existence. And that's without even bringing into the debate the origin of life. Which science also lacks an answer for.

Which means that science has no foundation for the beginning of the universe.

The Bible is pretty explicit. God created everything in Heaven and he created the earth. Pretty simple. I'm not trying to win this debate. I'm just trying to show you how empty 'science' (I put quotes around it because I'm not actually talking about real science, I'm speaking of materialism) is, and to ask you to consider a more logical alternative.

The origin of life? There is something you should know about science real quick, that you may already know but that I'll quickly recap.

Atoms -> Molecules -> Amino Acids -> Proteins -> so forth. We don't need to go any further for this discussion.

Amino Acids are something we need to focus on. They are essential to all life. However, life only uses about 20 of them. Also there are left and right handed amino acids. So each amino acid has a mirror image of itself, which is why they use the analogy of left and right handed. The problem is that life only uses left handed amino acids. In fact, you'll never see right handed amino acids in life forms because its literally poisonous. Which is why I find it interesting that the natural tendency for amino acids is to group into an even mixture of left and right handed amino acids. Always.

If you want, you can research the Miller Experiment (I believe that's the name of it, I'm sure someone can correct me if I'm wrong), where he caused amino acids to be created out of a simulation of the atmosphere of earth billions of years ago. He actually had to leave out oxygen, but I won't get into that just yet.

On the surface, this is a pretty strong argument for spontaneous creation of life. Since, after all, amino acids are fundamental to life. However, like I said a mixture of left and right handed amino acids is NEVER seen in life. What he got was an exactly even mix. All he proved was that there is such a thing as spontaneous generation of death (or non-life if you want to look at it that way).

So if amino acids naturally tend towards non-life, how can we even be alive? Well the protective casing of the cell is the only thing that keeps amino acids from forming something akin to a poison (the even mix). Cells prevent amino acids from reorganizing into left and right handed amino acids.

If you don't see where I'm going with this, I'll reword this quickly. You can't have a living cell without having a combination of ONLY left-handed amino acids, and you can't have a strictly left-handed combination of amino acids without a cell. Interesting.

Something to ponder: when living beings die, their amino acids begin to seperate back into the even mixture of left and right.

Furthermore, oxygen had to be left out of the experiment because its corrosive. It would have literally broken down the bonds, preventing life from forming. Which is why scientists thought for a while that life originated from the sea. That's another problem for scientists: you can't have spontaneous life with oxygen, but you can't have life at all without it.

If you want to say that the first atmosphere of earth lacked oxygen, just ask scientists. There is no evidence against oxygen in early atmosphere. The only evidence that there was no oxygen is circular reasoning. They need there to not be oxygen so that they can be right. Without oxygen we have no ozone and without ozone every living thing within the reach of the sun is fried.

The problem with water is hydrolosis. Which is similar to what oxygen does. The reason life can't come from the sea: water is made with oxygen (H20). I'm just using the things that science has discovered to find the truth. Something most scientists fail to do because they simply will NOT accept that God is real.

So far, science fails to explain two very important issues.

1). The origin of the universe.
2). The origin of life.

I'm actually going to take this further. Instead of letting this thread turn into a defense of faith, I'm going to keep pointing out why I find science to not only be ridiculous, but unscientific.

For the sake of keeping this from getting insanely long (if it hasn't already), I'll only bring up one more point.

This one directly relates to evolution.

When we debate evolution and religion, we're not actually debating science and religion. Its debating religion and religion. I've already pointed out why evolution has no foundation, but I think its plain to see (using science) why evolution also has no evidence to back it up.

Take a look at the fossil record. Specifically the precambrian and the cambrian eras. To save some time, this is the foundation for life on earth. A time when not only the first cell 'spontaneously' appeared on earth, but evolved into many of the complex creatures that apparently are our ancestors.

If you actually look at what the fossil record shows, it doesn't show a gradual shift from one celled creatures to creatures with an indefinite amount of cells. We don't see gradual shifts from the most basic of lifeforms into the most complex. In fact, we see the opposite. The fossil record seems to show a sudden appearance of complex life. You can't have single celled creatures spontaneous form into a billion celled creature 'overnight'. I say overnight speaking figuratively. If evolution is true, the fossil record should be a confused jumble of creatures that are not only incompletely adapted to their environments, but that have morphology (shape) and adaptations that would be utterly useless to them because they are nothing but intermediate designs between animals.

If you find wings on a lizard, does that prove that the lizard is becoming a bird? Or that the lizard needed to fly to survive? What about half wings? what about wing nubs? We don't find these things, we only find creatures that are adapted to their environments. Almost as if they were designed that way.

Darwin himself proposed many problems to his own theory. His example of long necked turtles surviving a drought because they can reach plants that their short-necked brothers and sisters cannot simply demonstrates a loss of genetic data. How is that evolution? We're left with less than we had before.

Darwin also asked the question, that if evolution is true, why is nature not all in a confusion? Like I said before, we should see adaptations that are nothing more than intermediate.

If you want to point out the pancreas and the tail bone, then I suggest you study anatomy. They have a purpose.

Materialism and evolution has no foundation, and they have no answers for the origin of the universe, life, nor a source of the wide array of creatures found on our planet. The Bible does. As a christian I don't fear science, I embrace it. There's absolutely no reason the two can't coexist except that scientists have their own religion: materialism, and they stubbornly refuse to accept the obvious.

To all of you, it may seem illogical to believe in a God. But when I look at the universe and all of life, it seems illogical to me not to believe in God.

However, I'm not trying to win this debate. In order to truly win this debate, it would have to end with all of you believing in God. That's simply not within my power. All I can do is discredit mankind's false religions and let God handle it from there.

Just ask yourself this. Materialism and evolution is obviously based on faith. A faith without a foundation and without evidence to back it up. What does that faith have to offer any of you? Faith in Jesus Christ can offer eternal life. And science only shows that there is evidence to back up creation. You can make your choice, but for me that choice is obvious.

If what I've said has perked your interest, this is just the tip of the ice berg. There is so much more to this debate that scientists refuse to tell you. In fact, much of what you read in text books in public school (I went to one) concerning the origin of life is half truths or even flat out lies. I recommend you look into it (with a TRUE scientific mind) and find out for yourself. These experiments that supposedly show life could be spontaneously generated end in failure. I don't have the time or space to outline on this forum why that is. Its something that you can only learn through science.

This is a good start:

http://www.arn.org/docs/mills/gm_originoflifeandevolution.htm

Its not a religious text. Its just some fair-minded scientists asking why we use 'science' to mislead our youth in public schools. Its a VERY interesting read.

God bless.

Posted By: Anonymous

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/27/06 23:20

Some of you will notice the mistake I made with the pancreas. Its actually appendix. Don't ask how I managed to goof that one. I think I gave myself carpal tunnel typing that last post, though.

Posted By: jcl

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/28/06 06:33

Anonymous: I don't want to enter the worn out discussion 'science vs. creationism', but I want to protest one misconception in your post:

Quote:

our scientists have decided that no matter what the evidence offers, they will not believe in God

Scientists do normally not believe in creationism, but many scientists definitely believe in God.

They have no problems to accept both science and God. Nor have most christians in other countries. So why is this so difficult for you US christians?

Posted By: Matt_Aufderheide

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/28/06 10:35

I will say that the trend for the last few hundred years for scientists, and the educated public has been toward materialism. If a scientist has a religious faith, it is often very non-specific. Certainly almost no scientist or educated person of any worth believes in such concpts as divine intervention and so on.

Although i dont know, but if you did a survey of scientists, i bet you would find a smaller number of religious people than in the general public.

The fact is, the more we learn about biology and so on, the more the biblical explanations seem unlikely. No scientist of any standing accepts biblical creationism. There is no "controversy" in the scientific community, as is suggested by creationists. The only controversies, and they are indeed very heated, is over exactly how evolution works.

Posted By: jcl

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/28/06 10:57

This is different in Europe and in the US.

In the US you are certainly right, religion seems to be retreating among scientists and educated persons.

In Germany however, where 80% of the population is already atheist or at least indifferent to religion, the concept of God is probably more popular among scientists than in the general public. However it's more the God concept of Socrates or Kant, rather than the God of the bible.

Posted By: Scramasax

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/28/06 18:35

@ Anonymous

The simple problem with any religion and it's written wisdom, is that it is preconceived. If A=bible/koran/etc., the empirical events such as B and C have to equal A. A is always right. So A=B+C can never equal anything besides A. Sometime, if not always, things don't fit in A very good so B and C are hammered on to get what's real to fit into A.

Evolution, the Big Bang, or string theory's clash of two high dimensional membrane, are all attempts at solving the mysteries of objective reality. They are proven right or wrong based on their own merits and will or will not stand up to the test of time.

The problem with having the answers in a singular or multiple book(s), is that these are already consider true. Deviation from these truths are considered lies without a real review. Religion does change as time goes on, its usually just painful to those who cling onto the old ways.

Posted By: Anonymous

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/28/06 19:56

Fair enough, JCL. I don't believe the argument over whether or not scientists refuse to believe in God needs to be taken anywhere. I've read what scientists have to say about God, and I've seen what they do in public schools. I'm simply reacting to what I've researched myself. If I'm wrong then I'm wrong.

However, let me protest one thing that wrote in your post.

Quote:

They have no problems to accept both science and God. Nor have most christians in other countries. So why is this so difficult for you US christians?

The christians I know of have no problem with science. They embrace it, in fact. Myself, I love science. For me, science has basically revealed a huge "Made by God" sticker on the universe. Science has always been an interest of mine. Like any young child I was captivated by dinosaurs, and I loved watching science shows on television, even though they contradicted a lot of what I learned as a child.

The point is, you're assuming we 'US Christians' have a problem with mixing science and God. I think the only reason you're saying that is because we don't mix the 'billion year old' theory and the evolution theory in with the word of God. I see no need to. Knowing what I know, evolution looks like a joke. Science can coexist with religion, because it only adds evidence to the word of God.

Just because we don't bend over backwards to appease theories that hold no water doesn't mean we're ignorant of science.

Quote:

The fact is, the more we learn about biology and so on, the more the biblical explanations seem unlikely.

I've already said all I can say on this. If you don't want to find out for yourself, that's your deal. All I can do is show what I've learned. I don't claim to be an award winning biologist, but the fact of the matter is that you don't even need to go beyond 9th grade science to show how baseless evolution is.

Moreso, as scientists keep testing the bounds of spontaneous creation, they simply find more and more evidence that we were created. I've provided what I know, and I've provided a link as evidence to back up my claims. That's all I can do for now.

Science has tried for hundreds of years to find a way to prove we couldn't possibly have been created and they consistently run into dead ends.

The sad part is, that where they run into dead ends they simply hide the truth from our public school students and pass along failed experiments as proof of materialism. Its sickening.

Quote:

The problem with having the answers in a singular or multiple book(s), is that these are already consider true. Deviation from these truths are considered lies without a real review. Religion does change as time goes on, its usually just painful to those who cling onto the old ways.

That's a fair statement. Except that science itself backs up everything I've said. Its obvious you guys either didn't read my entire post, or that you don't believe me, or that you don't care. In any case, there's nothing more I can really say on this subject.

I love debates, but I think we've reached a dead end here.

Again, I'm not going to split hairs on religion because we're not even on the same page. That's not to say that I'm less capable of understanding, or that you're less capable. However, we might as well be screaming at each other through sound proof walls. There are a lot of problems people have with religion. I've come up with a lot of these problems myself.

That said, I don't put my faith in religion, I put my faith in God. He hasn't changed yet, and I have yet to come up with any complaints against him, though I've tried. Believe it or not, even though I'm an ignorant christian, I have a mind tuned to discovery, and curiosity. I love researching, and I love knowing more about my world. If there is no God, I would want to be the first to know. Luckily for people like me, God hasn't left it all up to faith. He's left his signature all over creation.

I have to go to work now. Its been nice chatting.

Posted By: Marco_Grubert

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/28/06 21:08

Quote:

Just because we don't bend over backwards to appease theories that hold no water doesn't mean we're ignorant of science.

That is exactly what it means when you ignore theories that you don't like. Since you seem to prefer young earth creationism you'll have to throw away huge portions of geology, chemistry, physics, and biology that corroborate the estimate of earth's age. If you don't like evolution, that's fine, but hundreds of thousands of biologists and anthropologists work with this theory every day. Don't you think that scientists who have been studying these fields for decades and would easily get international recognition for coming up with a better theory would not do so ?

Do you realize the arrogance & ignorance in claiming that 9th grade science disproves evolution when it is the bedrock of so much research or when you have dozens of nobel laureates defending the teaching of evolution against dishonest attacks from theists ?

Knowing how biased apologetic writings can be, let me make sure that this point gets across: evolution is not some funny idea of a handful of biologists. It is the basis of entire scientific fields that is accepted by almost all scientists in these fields. If we were talking about physics instead it's like saying "Newton's laws are baseless" and though you'd find a few weirdos subscribing to this belief too, almost all physicsts would laugh at this notion. Just like biologists/geologists laugh at creationism/ID/sudden appearance.

There are ways to reconcile religion and science without looking like a fool, claiming that scientists are either all dumb or part of a huge conspiracy against your favorite religion is not one of them.

FAQ: http://talkorigins.org/origins/faqs.html

Posted By: NITRO777

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/28/06 21:41

Quote:

There are ways to reconcile religion and science without looking like a fool, claiming that scientists are either all dumb or part of a huge conspiracy against your favorite religion is not one of them.

Precisely. There is no way to scientifically prove the existence OR non-existence of God. Yet there are still plenty of Christian scientists who study physical law. Just because I believe in God does not mean I reject the science which makes my car operate. The difference between science is that a scientist studies how things work and a philosopher studies why things work.

The reason we have non-sensical theories like evolution and "multiple parallel universes" is because science is trying to figure out why we are here instead of just understanding laws that govern our present existence.

Posted By: Anonymous

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/28/06 23:14

As always, as on every internet forum, two sides continuously fight to disprove each other with indepth descriptions of each other's hyprocrasies. This evolution/creation crap is getting reeeaall old and brings absolutely nothing new to the table.

Creationists put their "faith in god", yet dont realize evolutionists dont. Stop preaching about your faith, cause it gives you no foundation in their eyes. They want cold hard facts with mathematical equations and the like. Evolutionists live by sight, not by faith. The dead ends the creationsists see in evolution are the same dead ends evolutionsists see in creation. So please stop preaching.

Evolutionists seek for every contradiction, every hypocrasy, every mistake in the basis of the creation and the creationist's explanation of his god and his works. This is of course nessisary because faith and god are too vauge to be written down into understandable terms for evolutionists. Yet evolutionists unknowingly use BLIND FAITH just like creationists when they attempt to explain the big bang or evolution. You can use all the sedimentary rock fossils and slowley "changing" bone structures all you want, but you still havent proven anything. Neither of the sides have, and never will.

when will you dummies learn that no one of either side of creation or evolution will be converted from some off-topic off shoot of a videogame forum? Im pretty sure the meaning of life cant be found on some internet forum.

Go ahead, pick apart my sentences and show my hyposcrasies, idiosyncrasies and the like. The fact is, neither of us are going to change.

Posted By: NITRO777

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/28/06 23:27

Quote:

two sides continuously fight to disprove each other with indepth descriptions of each other's hyprocrasies.

nobody is fighting here yet.

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when will you dummies learn that no one of either side of creation or evolution will be converted from some off-topic off shoot of a videogame forum?

Noone is converting anyone, it is just a place to voice your opinion or solidify your own thoughts. There is nothing more productive to ones own ideas then an argument against them. It is very good to hear opposition to one's own beliefs, it will usually have a beneficial effect towards strengthening your opinions.

I have read more than one book and hundreds of web pages both supporting my beliefs and against them as a direct result of these kinds of discussions. So therefore, as wrong as these atheists are, I have also learned volumes about my own beliefs and the beliefs of others through this discourse, and in a way we should be grateful to those who disagree with us.

It does not have to be a war.

Posted By: Anonymous

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/29/06 00:05

I take that back if i could, its not a war nor a fight at all. If anything, I used the term to describe the backandforth-ness/stalemate of these discussions. You can give me that.

Of course no one is converting anyone, but "for doubters of god's existence" sure sounds like a subtle cue to cause SOME sort of dissention against the opposite beleif. People dont care about other people's opinion until it grates against their own. "I like chocolate" and "I like locating forum members and kiling them" are examples, but one is made to get a rouse from someone.

Nevertheless, I still don't find anything fruitfull of these discussions. For every pro-creation site you will find an equally equipped pro-evolution site. By that I mean for every "accurate" site that provides plenty of information reguarding a side, there is another one effectivly nullifying the previous site. Which brings the point of, running but staying in the same place. Youve gotten nowhere with alot of work.

I dont know too much about the bible but I do recall Solomon travailing in his revelation about groaning with too much knowledge. He was granted the wisdom of God supposedly, but still he ended up silly as any other man. He had gotten nowhere with that wisdom.

Posted By: ICEman

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/29/06 00:17

I agree with Nitro..I dont just have my opinion because I have it..

Oposing viewpoints are an important part of forming ones view on things. It doesnt become a war until you get offended and hostile. To me, in order to form a logical view, you have to understand and dissect all sides, just like a judge.

Personally I think this particular debate is sorta moot just because no side knows more truth than the other, really. I figure we'll find out eventually, but its fun to entertain as long as it remains mature and civil and you come with an open mind

Posted By: Matt_Aufderheide

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/29/06 00:58

Quote:

The reason we have non-sensical theories like evolution ... is because science is trying to figure out why we are here instead of just understanding laws that govern our present existence.

How can you say evolution is non-sensical?.. its about the most elegant scientific theory in history. It explains so much. All scientists accept evolution. If you don't you are denying the validity of science and the scientific method, so you might as well give up the science that makes your car work. That evolution occurs is settled fact, and there is no debate or controversy. How it occurs is indeed debated. But there is no question that is does. It is as certain as anything we know.

Do you even have a basic understanding of Darwinian evolution? That the evidence in the fossil record only suports and confirms what can readily be observed in nature? Darwin developed his theory after examining isolated populations of animals in the Galapagos Islnads. He found that the species there were very similar, obviously derived from, specias formt he South American mainland. But that each speicas had apparently aquired adaptations to specifc environmental conditions. For instance, very closely related birds had differnt beak lengths and so on.. which could be explained by feeding methods and availablitiy of food.

This was the beginning of the theory, and this is how science works, forming a general conclusion from specific evidence. Since his time, much more has been learned, and eveything confirms that the principle is sound. In fact evolution is the BASIS of all the biological sciences. Modern biology started with Darwin.

Indeed, if you take away evolution, nothing makes sense in biology. Genetics becomes arbitrary and meaningless. Taxonomies are irrelevant. There might as well be no relationship between the species. It it would like taking Newton away from physics, because he is cornerstone of physical theory, even he has been since superseeded by improved theories.

Therefore, if you insist on denying evolution, you deny science--pure and simple. You are free to live in your delusions, but dont expect intelligent poeple to take you seriously.

Posted By: NITRO777

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/29/06 01:38

Quote:

All scientists accept evolution.

What is all scientists? What qualifies one as a scientist in your opinion? Are you talking about people with associate degrees? Probably not.How about people with bachelors degrees? Probably not. How about a masters? Or do we need a Phd to be considered a scientist? Lets just assume that by "all scientists" you mean only people with PhD's. And to further refine our group, lets only choose people that have PhD's with Biological background, because a PhD in law or economics would not help us very much with the study of life.

All physicians have a strong biological background and all physicians have PhD's, so therefore they would have to qualify as your group of "All scientists". There have been several studies which have shown that the majority of physicians believe in God, miracles and creation, including this one:
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2004/dec/04122202.html

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=42061

I have known doctors and biologists who have degrees up to their elbows which believe in God and are very much convinced of the complete farce of evolution. So please do not come up with these ridiculous, unsupported statements about "all scientist."

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Do you even have a basic understanding of Darwinian evolution?

As a matter of fact I do, and Darwin himself knew that all his theories depended upon finding intermediate fossils which he assumed a later generation would find. We never found them.

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He found that the species there were very similar, obviously derived from, specias formt he South American mainland.

obviously derived from? What species obvously derives from what other species? You cant put a monkey next to a man and say that man is obviously deriven from monkeys, thats not scientific at all.

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But that each speicas had apparently aquired adaptations to specifc environmental conditions. For instance, very closely related birds had differnt beak lengths and so on.. which could be explained by feeding methods and availablitiy of food.

Adaptation is NOT evolution, now Im wondering if YOU have any knowledge of the basic of Darwin's theory.

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This was the beginning of the theory, and this is how science works, forming a general conclusion from specific evidence. Since his time, much more has been learned, and eveything confirms that the principle is sound. In fact evolution is the BASIS of all the biological sciences. Modern biology started with Darwin.

Once again your coming out with all kinds of statements that have no scientific basis at all.

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Genetics becomes arbitrary and meaningless.

How?

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Taxonomies are irrelevant.

So it becomes irrelevant to name species? How are we going to classify things?

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It it would like taking Newton away from physics, because he is cornerstone of physical theory

Newton had math and science experimentation to back him up, Darwin has nothing. And Newton was a very sold out fanatical born again Christian.

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but dont expect intelligent poeple to take you seriously.

What intelligent people? I dont see any intelligence at all in the post you made. It was just a bunch of opinion and rhetoric.

Posted By: ICEman

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/29/06 01:38

I laugh at the concept of us coming from monkeys when human (close to modern human) remains have been found that predate almost all of the ape to man stuff.

I only think it's ridiculous because the complexity of mutation suggested by Darwin is far too complex. (i.e. Mammalian descendants cannot come from amphibians who came from fish. That is far too radical of a transformation on the DNA level to have occured in only a few billion years.)

My belief is that modern man is a descendant of earlier man... a man that we will be able to prove did exist once we are able to scientifically analyze the remains we have found. Currently, the age of these remains is estimated around 3 billion years..but they were so old that carbon dating couldnt be applied to them.

Obviously sapienite variations of primate did exist, but I don't believe that the origins of man as we see it today came directly from them..especially when new evidence of man that more closely resembles modern man is being uncovered.

Right now I make no sense, but I'll bring some evidence to the table soon. I'm still researching, in part because I'm formulating my own theory of evolution.. one which hopefully makes more sense than Darwinist evolution.

I am researching because I am having trouble myself placing us beyond 200 million years ago.. when the split of Pangea took place.

Posted By: Neonotso

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/29/06 02:28

For a while now, Kent Hovind has been offering I think it was about a 1/4 of a million dollars to anyone who could prove evolution and no one has... I am a Christian here too. I believe the universe is about 6,000 years old and that dinosaurs still exist in some places. So, yeah, that's my opinion.

Posted By: ICEman

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/29/06 02:35

xD jejeje..oh..oops well. I respect your opinion but um..come on 6000 years? I have gym shoes older than that, dude.

I can believe the dinosaurs.. There's alot of undiscovered country on earth, we can't rightly say what exists and what doesnt.

Posted By: Marco_Grubert

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/29/06 02:41

Quote:

For a while now, Kent Hovind has been offering I think it was about a 1/4 of a million dollars to anyone who could prove evolution

Well that would be easy money, but of course Hovind is not looking for proof of evolution, he's looking for a complete explanation of how the universe came into being. From an older "Dr. Dino" page:

Quote:

*NOTE:
When I use the word evolution, I am not referring to the minor variations found in all of the various life forms (microevolution). I am referring to the general theory of evolution which believes these five major events took place without God:

1. Time, space, and matter came into existence by themselves.
2. Planets and stars formed from space dust.
3. Matter created life by itself.
4. Early life-forms learned to reproduce themselves.
5. Major changes occurred between these diverse life forms (i.e., fish changed to amphibians, amphibians changed to reptiles, and reptiles changed to birds or mammals).

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/hovind.html

Posted By: ICEman

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/29/06 03:16

Yea.. that would be easy money.. accept..

Can't really explain how the whole universe came into being.. we're not nearly advanced enough to do anything more than good guessing.

Posted By: Grimber

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/29/06 03:35

evolotion, like other basis in science is a THEORY. theory based on scientific methodologies of observation. Darwin never said in his theory that man CAME from apes or monkeys. We evolved along SIMILAR lines. We are related, NOT the same.

Genetics which is one of the few sciences that is next to impossible to refute results has shown over extensive testing the GENTETIC conections of primates

this site covers the science briefly with some nice brief charts on respective gentic relationships
http://www.origins.tv/darwin/intro1.htm#Introduction

we are not the result of 2 monkeys 'doing it' in a bush to birth a human baby. it is millions of years of minor gentic changes with wide number of related species dieing out.

now, why do christians fear evolution so much? Because it lays direct doubt on the 2 principles of christianity

1. though the death and resurection of Jesus, it provides the 'faithful' thier evidance that man, though human form of christ, is connected to the divine. Greater purpose than our lives on earth, guarenteed immortality.

2. mankind will never acheive that imortality untill ALL of humanity are converted to christianity. i.e. christs 2nd comming to earth, revolations, end of the world, end of time, etc.

anything that questions these 2 princilples questions the entire basis of their faith, thier fear.

to say we evolved is to say we are not special, not devine. just random chance due to nature and enviroment. defuinatly something a 'christain' would never accept.

if as christans proclaim that god knows all, is infinate and 'works in mysterious ways' but it would be apparently unconcivable to christians, that god would work with gentics and let nature takes it course to let the most hardy and adpative of his/her creations survive while the weaker give way to those that survive and adapt

having faith does not mean you SHOULD be ignorant.
science isn't about truth, its about facts and theories based on facts which are considerd true UNTILL they can be proven (by scientific methodology) to be incorrect.

God cannot be proven or disproven. that is a question for truth, not fact.

what can (and should be IMO) be questioned is religion, ( im not talking about your faith), but the organization of religion and what it has/does do to manipulate the truth of your religion to keep your connection to that organization. the church is a very powerful economic and political power. anyone that would disagree with that hasn't payed much attention to the past 2000+ years of history.

the church has always used the 'fear for your soul' as the basis of its power and connection. any such large power would do anythign to keep and expand on such power. even manipulate the truth, cover ups even outright lie.
study not your religion but the history of the church.
even today you have many denominations that place their own meanings to various passages and ignore other parts entirely of the so called 'holy word of god'.

if it is the holy word of god then it has to be ALL true as-is. anything else, any excuses or interpitation or view point cleary indicats one thing. its not ALL the word of god. it is/has been manipulated by man. but, what parts? how can you belive one part and not another if its not all true? the only way to get the truth is you have to go back BEFORE the alterations. to pick apart 2000 years of manipulated truth is rediculous.

the only way to sort past the dogma is combind diciples of sciences to root out the facts in the religion from the centuries falsehoods. such reseach with facts would give more affermation to a TRUE faith then a false manipulated faith.

you should also not be ignorant to other relgions. no one religion holds ALL the truths to know of god. if god created everything and everyone, then god would approach each 'group' of people ( tower of bable ring a bell?) and teach them how THEY could understand best. Pride is the assumtion your religion is the RIGHT one. Faith in god and religion arn't the same. faith is your connection to god.

religion is a buisness, not faith.

Posted By: NITRO777

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/29/06 04:14

Quote:

this site covers the science briefly with some nice brief charts on respective gentic relationships
http://www.origins.tv/darwin/intro1.htm#Introduction

These charts are not data findings, they are interpretations of findings. There is a Christian interpretation also which I doubt anyone cares about.

Interpretations are opinions, and while I really respect opinions I think that your opinions and .50 cents still cannot even buy me a coffee.

In other words opinions are worthless.

The issue here is that evolution is a theory and it is just as unproveable as intelligent design which is just as unproveable as the origin of the universe.

Admit that science has no way of proving the origins of life and matter anymore than Christians have a way of proving it then you have my ear. But if you ignorantly cling to the belief that science has proven evolution or has provided proof of the origin of the universe and I am forced to believe that you indeed are the ignorant one.

And I am speaking of "you" in the general sense, not Grimber or Matt or anyone else.

Posted By: Neonotso

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/29/06 04:17

By the way guys, to truly be a Christian, I'd say you'd be more in more of a relationship than a religion... There are lots of people who claim to be Christians but aren't really part of what Christianity should be.

Posted By: Matt_Aufderheide

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/29/06 04:17

Quote:

I have known doctors and biologists who have degrees up to their elbows which believe in God and are very much convinced of the complete farce of evolution. So please do not come up with these ridiculous, unsupported statements about "all scientist."

In any case, you can find cranks in any discipline. The fact is modern biolgical sciences depend entirely on evolutionary theory.

Quote:

and Darwin himself knew that all his theories depended upon finding intermediate fossils which he assumed a later generation would find. We never found them.

Yes we did, and in fact Darwin was triumphantly vindicated 2 years after publication of Origin of Species with the discovery of archaeopteryx, a form connnecting dinosaurs to birds. More recently, we have found many feathered dinosaurs that resemble birds and dinosaurs so closely, that it's difficult to draw a distinction between the groups, and now many scientist consider birds as therapod dinoaurs. This is a fascinating example of how two apparently distinct groups are shown to be closely related to each other, because the latter share derived characteristic with the former. Birds therefore are diapsids, like reptiles. In other words, birds are more closely related to dinosaurs than they are to mammals. The fact that both are warm blooded shows a case of convergent evolution, where the same traits are NOT derived, but evolved seperately.

Darwin predicted early human ancestors, and that the earliest would be found in Africa. It is a common misconception, one you seem to hold, that humans are descended from "monkeys" . This is not the case. Humans and monkeys however, did have a common ancestor. Chimpanzees and the great apes diverged from the human line more recently than monkeys, and in fact Chimps are our closest relatives--morphology and DNA comparisons prove this conclusively.

Obviously you know NOTHING of the fossil record, or do you belive that fossils are all hoaxes? There are a vast number of intermediate fossils, in fact all fossils are "intermediate" in that evolution is not made of discrete steps, and has no inevitiable or directed goal. Evolution IS adaptation. Just for instance, look at the various stem tetrapods, and you can see there is a clear transition between water and land-based forms. All the fossil record can give us are snapshots of an immensely long and gradual process. Howeever, remarkably, ebnough fossils formas have survide to enable us to construct very complete trees of life.

Fos instance, we have have hominind forms, going back in very obvious graduation, to millions of years ago. Look at the Homo Erectus skeleton, it is so very clearly related to us, that one walking down the stree, if cleaned up and in a suit, would probaly not warrant more than a glance.

Homo hiedlebergensis, homo habilis, and are good representatives of close ancestors. Going farther back we have austrolapithicus and so on. There is no other way to undertsand these fossil speacies without evolutionary theory. Exactly what the relationshoips are are still not compo,etely clear, but that humans share derived characteristic with homo erectus is clear. We alos share older derived characteristics with chimps. Characteristics are not convergent, but derived, because the structres are the same.

However, humans and birds are indeed distantly related, because the dinoaurs and mammals had a common ancestor, the amniotes, like A. Cotylorhynchus. These odd creatures had characteristics that eventually are shared by all living reptiles and mammals. This is yet another exmaple of 'intermediate' forms.

The problem is, you expect every possible permutation to be represented in the fossil record. They arent. Only a small number of specias have been preserved, but they are enough.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

However, we can even look at living specias to get an idea of what intermediate forms look like. Consider the lemurs. The lemurs are creatures that resemble, and may actually be ancestral, to all monkeys, apes, and hominids. The lemurs are clearly not monkeys or apes, but have many distinct characteristics that are more distinct in other species.

Lunfishes, for example, while not ancestral to the first land tetrapods, show primitive lungs capable of breathing air. This is an example of evolutionary recursion, in which the same evolutionary step is made more than once.

Look at the coconut crab of the South Pacifc and Indian oceans. This is certainly a crab, or is it? It is in fact not a crab per se, but a derived hermit crab, which is not a true crab. It is a related crusacean, for whom evolution has found a suitable form, that resembles the true crabs. This evidence of recursive convergence clearly supports that evolution proceeds by the process of natural selection, that is, favorable forms are more likely to survive and reproduce than lass favorable forms. That the crab-like is favorable to arthropods is clear. Other arthropods crustaceans have also evolved into a crab-like form.

The coconut crab is also interesting to us, because it has independently developed an air-breathing lung, although not like our lungs. in fact, it still has rudamentary gills also, but these gills dont function very well, and a coconut crab will drown underwater after a few minutes. Interestingly, it is not fully adapted for dry land either, as its "lungs" must be occasionally wetted.

How else do you explain rudamentary gills that dont work well, and lungs that needs some water to function, if you dont accept that the coconut crab is derived from water-living animals?

An interesting form of this recursive convergent evolution can be seen in the "icthyoid" forms, bascially a long, slender, streamlined shape, a single erect dorsal fin, two large fore-fins, and a finned tail. Beginning with icthyosaurs( a giant sea-going reptile), to sharks, and finally dolphins, we can see that this form is apparently so favorable, that three extremely different groups of animals have evolved to almost exactly resemble each other. This is a strong case of a form so succesful, it is almost a case of inevitability. Does this contradict the idea that evolution isnt directed or inevitable? No, because the forms only evolved under similar conditions, and plenty of sea-going species look nothing at all like this.

An existing species bears in its genes marks of its history, as a canyon's walls shows the layers of its making in the sedimentary rocks.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As i tried to show in as few words as possible, there are clear intermediate cases. Living animals have traces in their bodies of previous modes of living. Very differnt groups come to resembel each other because the form they take is favolrable in the same conditions. But not all forms converge, becaue of randomness, drift, and otehr factors.. showing that evolution is never consistent, and is essentially random. What is tempting to see as design is simply our anthropomorphicizing a very complex and gradual process.

One may argue that science can only show how, not why, something is, and this is true. In its strictest sense, "why" is an anthropic term: i may ask "why do you like blue?", "why did you go there?", but not "why does the apple fall from a tree?". What i really mean is "how did the apple fall?". The apple falls because of physical forces, but it made no choice to do so. "Why?" is a question of behavior, "how?" is a question of mechanics. So in the end, no scientist should ask "why?" but only "how?".

(I'd appreciate it if any biologist would care to comment on my arguements, and make any corrections if needed)

Posted By: ICEman

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/29/06 04:35

I agree Grimber, the only real way to get anywhere is to stop treating science and religion as two totally polar perspectives and try to marry the truth within religious reference, with our scientific knowledge. Because both knowledge bases ARE incomplete.. our answer will still be limited, but it will be a more kosher approach than any side has taken so far.

:| Now you're talkin Nitro.

Same thing with the existence or non existence of God. The sooner all sides, religions, and areligions are ready to admit that they dunno any better than any other side that they DONT know the absolute truth..the better off we'll be.

:| To me, what needs to be done is not one side convincing every other side of its viewpoint.. cuz that's never going to happen..what we need to agree upon is a general.. central agreement for all intents and purposes. The conflict and disagreement

To me, in the real world, we dont need to know what created us, what created it, and so on. What we should be digging toward is where we're going..instead of where we came from. in a sense where we come from is a big part of where we're going, but we have yet to approach that question nonpartisanly..and as a result we're no closer to answering where we came from then we were 10,20,200, 2000 years ago.. it's too big a question.

So what we should evaluate is.. what is our condition now.. and what do we do to thrive for the next few millenia.

All truth will reveal itself in time. We just have to be more patient than we have been.. cuz it's not going to come to us right away.

Posted By: Grimber

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/29/06 05:46

yes, science and theory is based on interpritation of messurable and definable facts.

religion is interpritation based on opinion. denominations and even within individual denomitions people are divided based on INDIVIDUAL interpritation.

at least with science if a fact disproves a theory that theory is reexamined or dismissed entirely.

any fact though that questions religion ( not faith) is immediatly dismissed as impossible as if it is intended to threaten your individual faith. it is unfortunate that the facts of our world and our past are so biased and manipulated because it might conflict with religion dogma.

the 'process of evolution' has been proven to occure time and again for decades. its of no fault of anyone else that the 'faithful' have a tendancy to ignore science with it doesn't fit their idealologies but will turn around and embrace it when it does. just as it has done time and again thoughout the history of the church

Posted By: Scramasax

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/29/06 09:02

@ Grimber
I agree with you almost 100%, and wouldn't dare split hairs with you're logic.

Science and religion aren't in primary conflict. Christianity specifically is to some degree, because of Genesis, and some other minor points of the bible. This will pass though, in the next few centuries or so. It will simply be considered silly to believe in the Garden of Eden and the 6000 year old earth as time goes on.

A good number of Christians have already moved on, believing that God created the universe in the way he wanted. Time is flexible, according to the laws of relativity, so maybe 7 days were enough to cook up the whole thing. I really can't help on the Garden of Eden thing, but I always look at it as, us regretting becoming conscious beyond that of our animal roots.

Real science doesn't support the creationist theory cause it can't. I think science tried for awhile, but it wasn't working out. Some people claiming to be scientists are simply selling something popular to an ever shrinking group of people, who want to believe in the old ways. I'm sure its good money and good acclaim in its limited scope, but its not really science.

There are galaxies moving away from a single point, and we can see back in time to things much farther away than 6k years. We've seemed to evolve from animals. These are theories, that are based on the parsimonious evidence that are commonly observed.

Darwin was a great scientist, but he was born one hundred plus years ago. Its kind of funny how Christians argue points of the most popular evolutionary scientist, but not the most recent. Even now modern evolutionist smash his old theories and create new ones in an attempt to create better models to represent objective reality. This though, is the key difference. Good science isn't based on what we want to be true, but is a path in finding out the truth.

Posted By: NITRO777

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/29/06 15:23

Quote:

If you define a scientist as a person who adheres to the scientific method, I think it's safe to state that "[a]ll scientists accept evolution" as a reasonable way to understand life.

No I would never define a scientist by your narrow-minded view of understanding the scientific method. I would define a scientist who looks at facts, not at interpretations of facts.

I scientist's job is to observe physical phenomena, not to make judgements about that phenomena.

Observing that chimps have a lot of the same DNA as humans is a real observation, making the claim that we evolved from chimps because of this observation is a leap of faith outside the realm of science.

Posted By: NITRO777

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/29/06 16:05

Quote:

Darwin was a great scientist, but he was born one hundred plus years ago. Its kind of funny how Christians argue points of the most popular evolutionary scientist, but not the most recent. Even now modern evolutionist smash his old theories and create new ones in an attempt to create better models to represent objective reality. This though, is the key difference. Good science isn't based on what we want to be true

I dont use Darwin in my arguments, I am well aware that his theories are dated. The only ones who have used Darwin in this thread was Matt, and he is on your side.

Your absolutely right, good science does not make their theories fit with what they want to be true.

@Grimber

Quote:

yes, science and theory is based on interpritation of messurable and definable facts.

religion is interpritation based on opinion. denominations and even within individual denomitions people are divided based on INDIVIDUAL interpritation.

at least with science if a fact disproves a theory that theory is reexamined or dismissed entirely.

Oh your right,.. absolutely right. Science is the superior method of determining physical truth. If any group will find the facts of this universe we live in, it will be science, not religion. I just reject theories who try to use science to back up their opinions.

I dont blame anyone for looking at scientific data to prove evolution, I just disagree when they state opinions as fact, it is no less untruthful than me stating that God created the earth as a fact. I have no proof of that, so I wouldnt claim it as a fact.

Quote:

the 'process of evolution' has been proven to occure time and again for decades. its of no fault of anyone else that the 'faithful' have a tendancy to ignore science with it doesn't fit their idealologies but will turn around and embrace it when it does. just as it has done time and again thoughout the history of the church

Not true. I embrace science fully when it has conclusive proof of something.

Posted By: jcl

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/29/06 17:09

Quote:

No I would never define a scientist by your narrow-minded view of understanding the scientific method. I would define a scientist who looks at facts, not at interpretations of facts.

Well, you're free to define whatever you want. But I'm afraid in our real world a scientist won't care much about your definition of a scientist - his job is to work on theories. That's what science is about. At least since the 17th centory.

Posted By: Ran Man

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/29/06 17:26

Quote:

his job is to work on theories. That's what science is about. At least since the 17th centory.

And I for one just love theories!

Just take a look below at some "high" minded scientist in action!

Ahaa! Now that is REAL scientist, huh?!

Too bad the entire thing was just a "hoax." But, uggh, so many people and "lovers of science" of that time believed it!

Yeah, those BOGUS BONES of the Piltdown man sure intrigued a lot of folks. lol

OH YEAH! We humans are sooo advanced aren't we? haha

Posted By: NITRO777

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/29/06 17:30

Quote:

But in our real world, a scientist's job is to work on theories.

Good. Just dont expect people to accept unsubstantiated, unproven theories just because someone calls themselves a scientist.

You have defined a scientist as someone who accepts the scientific method, I have not rejected the scientific method, I have only rejected the baseless assertion that the scientific method has proven evolution.

I posted a link up above showing that a majority of physicians believe in God and miracles, do you think that all of these physicians, which have a lot stronger biology background then any of us here, reject the scientific method?

I only reject the statement that "all scientist believe in evolution". It was stated without any proof and there is still no proof of the statement.

Therefore, putting aside the issue of evolution for the moment, I would have to say that anyone who accepts the statement that "all scientists accept evolution" is a fool. Pure and simple. There is absolutely no substantiation anywhere that prove this dumb statement to be true. It is a complete fallacy based on n o evidence whatsoever.

You havent even defined a scientist. I am the only one who came close to a true approximation of what a scientist is.

Anders statement that all scientists accept evolution if they accept the scientific method is not only wrong, its moronic.

Therefore, because it is clearly wrong, I have to assume that he has a warped definition of the scientific method, and it is his interpretation of the scientific method which I consider narrow minded and useless.

Posted By: jcl

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/29/06 17:56

You're pretty quick with words like "moronic" or "narrow minded" when someone has a different opinion.

Low-level discussions about evolution vs. creationism often end up with arguing whether "all" or "not all" scientists accept evolution. However, everywhere, also in science, often are a few strange figures - like the piltdown fake guy whom Ran Man has posted. So, strictly speaking, "all" is not correct - I think it's quite possible that 0,01% of all scientists might believe in creationism. There are probably also 0,01% who believe that the earth is hollow.

However, the statement that 99,99% of all scientists accept evolution today is certainly correct. Draw your own conclusion.

Posted By: NITRO777

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/29/06 18:15

Quote:

You're pretty quick with words like "moronic" or "narrow minded" when someone has a different opinion.

Obviously you havent bothered to look at the statements of your peers on this forum when it comes to delieneation of character. I could post a LOT more derogatory remarks towards Christian ideas.

Quote:

But I'm afraid in our real world a scientist won't care much about your definition of a scientist - his job is to work on theories

Oh yeah, and you insinuate that aI am not a member of the "real world" because I dare challenge a narrow minded interpretation of the scientific method. Give me a break. Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones.

Quote:

However, the statement that 99,99% of all scientists accept evolution today is certainly correct. Draw your own conclusion.

Theres no data to draw conclusions from--its a complete fabrication on your part. You cannot just say that 99.99 % of all scientists accept evolution, you have no proof of that whatsoever. Are we supposed to believe you because you are the boss of Conitec?
Show some proof. At least I posted links, I showed something.

This is just a microcosm of the world at large. You have a bunch of people on this forum who are supposed to believe evolution because jcl or Matt_Aufderheide say so. This is the same thing that happens in high schools where students are supposed to believe evolution because the teacher says so.

They put a picture of monkey next to a man in a textbook and then pressure students into accepting it as scientific proof because they are the "teachers". And Christians are supposed to be the ones who are the sheep? Your a sheep if you believe evolution just because a "scientist" tells you it is true.

Posted By: PennyWise

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/29/06 18:30

Quote:

Your a sheep if you believe evolution just because a "scientist" tells you it is true.

I was taught that Earth is really about 5000 years old during old my Sunday school days. What does that make me?

Posted By: NITRO777

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/29/06 18:39

Quote:

I was taught that Earth is really about 5000 years old during old my Sunday school days. What does that make me?

It doesnt make any difference what you were taught, it only matters what you believed. Im not saying I agree with the age of the earth being 5000 years, but I am curious as to why you believe it is not. What exactly do you know about radiometric dating?

The issue is not who taught you what, the issue is whether or not you found out the answers for yourself.

Also, nobody forced you to got to Sunday school, kids are forced to go to public school, and they are forced to study evolution.

If you had to go to sunday school blame your mother, dont blame Christianity.

Posted By: TripleX

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/29/06 19:09

"You have a bunch of people on this forum who are supposed to believe evolution because jcl or Matt_Aufderheide say so. "

everyone is under influences.. you, me and matt or jcl.
The only important thing is that you can differ the influences in false and true (or also maybe true/false).

"Theres no data to draw conclusions from--its a complete fabrication on your part. You cannot just say that 99.99 % of all scientists accept evolution, you have no proof of that whatsoever. Are we supposed to believe you because you are the boss of Conitec?"

have you searched for data? you'll find a lot of data why and how much scientist believe in a religon / mircales etc. Why? because this people are suprised about this fact.

BTW: You'll find a "proof" to everything in the world wide web. No matter if this proof is correct or not.

" It doesnt make any difference what you were taught, it only matters what you believed. Im not saying I agree with the age of the earth being 5000 years, but I am curious as to why you believe it is not. What exactly do you know about radiometric dating?"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_Earth

(btw.. have a look at the creation date of the earth

)

Posted By: Neonotso

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/29/06 19:27

I say that most certified scientists are evolutionists or at least not Christians becuase they'd probably simply get fired if they were Christians. Also, I don't know if radiometric dating is similar to carbon dating, but from what I remember, carbon dating can actually give a different result just about every time you use it (on the same fossil or whatever you're analizing). Also, am I correct in saying that carbon dating uses light in some way? Well, just so you guys know, light, I'm prettty sure, is not actually a constant... It doesn't travel at a constant speed. It slows down as time goes on (or speeds up: don't remember which...

Posted By: Ran Man

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/29/06 19:41

WAIT! Dear people... We must unite and worship at the throne of science and Piltdown below!

WORSHIP HIM BELOW!!!

We must unite , pray and bow down at this throne above!
Because this Piltdown man WAS considered science at one time!

Worship! Worship!!!

LOL

<just joking> I'm trying to make you guys laugh, but seriously though read the statement and site below.

Quote:

There is not a shred of evidence in the fossil record to link the vertebrates to any supposed ancestor among the invertebrates. Even this supposed transition was supposed to take 100 million years, not a single intermediate has ever been discovered. If vertebrates themselves have not evolved, as seems certain, evolution theory is dead, and it is foolish to speculate about evolution of groups within the vertebrates, or within any other division.

I bought this book above and it is quite interesting.

http://www.creationdigest.com/summer2005/Gish_The_Bulldog_Speaks_His_Mind.htm

Posted By: NITRO777

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/29/06 20:53

Quote:

I say that most certified scientists are evolutionists or at least not Christians becuase they'd probably simply get fired if they were Christians

I wouldnt call these guys "certified scientists" I would call them "certified spineless jellyfish" because they are wimps which clearly do not deserve to call themselves Christians.

Quote:

Also, I don't know if radiometric dating is similar to carbon dating

carbon dating is a type of radiometric dating and it is only good for dating things up to 50000 years. It makes me wonder why there are coal with Carbon14 in it when coal is supposed to be millions of years old.

Quote:

Also, am I correct in saying that carbon dating uses light in some way?

No, cosmic rays hit neutrons in the atmosphere and those nuetrons hit nitrogen which converts it to Carbon14.

There are a bunch of variables at play when using carbon dating methods.

1)The amount of cosmic rays penetrating the atmosphere
2)The C14/C12 ratio in the atmosphere
3)A plant which take less Carbon14

Carbon dating is useless when trying to figure out the age of the earth.

Posted By: AndersA

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/29/06 21:22

Quote:

Anders statement that all scientists accept evolution if they accept the scientific method is not only wrong, its moronic.

So now I'm not only "narrow minded" I'm also a moron. Charming!
Your logic saying that your own failure in understanding a very simple, obvious, and not even slightly provoking fact, makes me a moron is indeed brilliant!
Me being narrow minded is also very interesting since most scientists would say that my definition is way too liberal.
But what do I know, I'm just a moron...

Posted By: NITRO777

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/29/06 21:51

Quote:

So now I'm not only "narrow minded" I'm also a moron.

I said your statement was moronic, not you. There is a big difference.

Quote:

If you define a scientist as a person who adheres to the scientific method, I think it's safe to state that "[a]ll scientists accept evolution" as a reasonable way to understand life.

Your statement compares the acceptance of the theory of evolution with the acceptance of the scientific method, by any basis of logic that comparison is wrong. It also goes on to say that all scientists accept this thinking which propels your statement into the realm of ridiculous.

At that point I had to assume that noone in their right mind would make this comparison so I concluded that your understanding of the scientific method must be warped.

The fact that scientist use the scientific method to prove evolution(or study evolution) is undisputed, and no scientist would argue with that. However using the scientific method to study a subject does not make the proof of that subject suddenly legitimate. We can use the scientific method to prove the existence of the loch ness monster, but the scientific method in itself does not prove anything, it just provides the superior method to approach the investigation.

Posted By: ICEman

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/29/06 23:01

:| Honestly, this is why ICEman is researching and formulating his own theory of evolution.. because he doesnt not buy that fish can mutate into lizards, into monkeys into primeval man to modern man in any less than a trillion years given the radicality of that mutation.

ICEman definately doesnt buy that we sprang into being 6000 years ago.. ICEman has his own idea of what has actually happened.

:| So as not to further propagate this war of limitedly substantiated opinions.. He will share it in about 10 years, when the theory is fully developed.

Posted By: Anonymous

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/29/06 23:14

I'm going to have to bow out of this debate. I have other things I need to get done with my time. I've realized that I'm wasting it here. Its getting to the point where not visiting this thread multiple times a day means getting lost from the discussion.

It has inspired me to further investigate just about every aspect of what's being discussed. For now, I must practice guitar. Peace.

Posted By: ICEman

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/29/06 23:49

xD This really isnt something that can be concluded.. its just entertainment for me.

Posted By: Neonotso

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/29/06 23:56

Thanks for the answers to my questions, Nitro!

Posted By: Ran Man

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/30/06 02:12

Quote:

xD its just entertainment for me.

Me too brother!

And for those who want to believe in Evolution and that they came from apes, well maybe they actually did come from apes!

They came from apes and I came from God. Hey, it sounds logical to me.

Oh well, back to game programming...

Funny stuff these forums are though... haha

Posted By: ICEman

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/30/06 02:17

:| Oh God, why is this still not closed ot locked or something lol.

It's a moot debate really.

Posted By: William

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/30/06 02:59

If the earth is 4+ billion years old, then why are we, as humans, so far behind on the technical curve? Since the advent of methods for keeping history, and judging from old books, we havn't made many advancments until around 2-3 thousands years ago. What happened for the billions of years beforehand? Did we just sit and stare at a rock? That doesn't make any sense... especially considering how from birth most of us want to learn and create... Keep this in perspective, 4 billion years of knowledge, verse how far we've come in only 2000 years... we should be well beyond UFO's by now.

Also, since we know humans looked like humans do today 2000 years ago, how come we never changed over 2000 years? Why don't I have 2 brains yet?

Will todays monkeys become humans in a few thousand years?

If we took a human and put them in the water their entire life, and their children, and so on, for lets say 1000 years, will they start to grow gills? Kinda like the Zora in Zelda.

Posted By: ICEman

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/30/06 03:34

:| Well evolution of that kind can take place but the main reason why i dont believe it did happened is because that would take billions upon billions of years.

As far as why we arent as far as our length of existence would dictate we should be..well maybe the last dominant civilization was just as intelligent, but just as dumb as we are, and they blew themselves back to the stoneage;

the stoneage that we know.

I always believed that if you dont learn from your mistakes and you just keep trying to make them work, then history will just repeat itself. I think that there once was an advanced human civilization, or several that got further up the development ladder than us.. but still hadnt learned enough wisdom to make it last.

Posted By: William

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/30/06 03:43

Then that would render all scientific advancments usless. After all, we'd just start from the stone-age again anyways, so what's the point of learning more?

P.S - I don't buy into us destroying ourselves. Information would have survived somehow... if there was a huge war today, i'm sure we all be burying our textbooks underground for future generations. Of course if we destroyed ourselves, then there would be no future generation. Unless you wait a few billion years for the monkeys of today to become the humans of tommorow.

Posted By: NITRO777

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/30/06 03:49

There is data, and there are conclusions to be made from data. The statement made by certain unnamed members of this forum that "all scientists accept evolution" is bogus.

I have sources here from a variety of organizations-- HAPPY READING!

http://titusonenine.classicalanglican.net/?p=7636

http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/050714/doctorsfaith.shtml

http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/rncse_content/vol17/5319_many_scientists_see_god39s__12_30_1899.asp

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002345130_docs23.html

http://www.exn.ca/Stories/1997/04/04/01.asp

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/10/22/opinion/polls/main965223.shtml

Of course, the amount of scientist who believe in evolution or God really doesnt effect the truth or untruth of the issue one iota. At this point it just remains as a matter of principle. Im tired of personal attacks made upon people who believe in God as being unreasonable, unintelligent, or delusional. You would think that someone with a good head on their shoulders would at least look at the data and admit that maybe, just maybe, all Christians are not delusional crackpots and that some of us are just as intelligent if not more intelligent than the people who are condemning us.

Posted By: ICEman

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/30/06 04:06

xD well I dunno what happened, but I dont believe all knowledge was lost.. it's slowly being recovered in the form of relics and artifacts.

Also..I dont think it'd render advancement useless...but the idea is to excercise proportional wisdom. If you advance and you dont get wiser while doing so, stuff like building superpowerful weapons of mass destruction tends to happen.. and it's really only a matter of time before you committ some collosal irreversible f***up which unintentionally cleans the slate of human civilization.

The idea to me is to advance, and become wiser,..and then you wont mess it all up, as has probably been done a few times, and is about to be done again by us.

Posted By: Matt_Aufderheide

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/30/06 08:57

Quote:

They came from apes and I came from God

Of course you still don't undertsand evolution, and the fact that Man didn't come from "apes".. we have a common ancestor. Get over it.

As Thomas Huxley said to a similar person:"I'd rather a monkey for a father than such a one as you."

Posted By: jcl

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/30/06 09:57

Nitro77: I suppose your main problem is that you are confusing Christianity with creationism. The second problem is that I see from your statements that you don't know much about the methods and purposes of science.

You've posted many links that you seem to think corroborate your claims, but in fact they corroborate the contrary. You should maybe read an article before posting a link to it:

"Scientists almost unanimously accept Darwinian evolution over millions of years as the source of human origins."

The links are mostly about how many scientists believe in God. But - and you can read this in your of own links - even the very religous scientists normally do not believe in creationism.

Protestantism has accepted evolution 100 years ago, Catholizism 25 years ago. Creationism is rejected not only by mainstream science, but also by mainstream Christianity.

You can believe in God and at the same time accept science, the Big Bang and the evolution theory. You can even see the "Hand of God" in Darwin's evolution if you want. Or you can believe in God and not care about science - that's also fine. But you really don't do yourself a favor attacking scientific theories and methods that you obviously do not know very well.

For a beginning, look at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/Wiki/science

Posted By: Matt_Aufderheide

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/30/06 15:44

Indeed, science has nothing to say on whether God exists or not. It does, however, give lie to the literal truth of creation stories in Genesis and in other religions. Some poeple think that to accept this, you must reject all of a religion, although logic doesnt really indicate that. The mainstream of Christians for instance, have learned to accept the Bible as an old group of texts, written and compiled by different poeple, and that many parts of it cannot be taken literally, because they are obviously untrue. The message is what is important, not the exact stories.

Poeple like to pick on evolution because they beleive it is hard to defend, because you cant go outside and observe evolution. But in fact this is not really the case. You can observe the effects of evolution in the anatomy of living creatures, just as you can know that world is very ancient by looking at the way water has eroded the land it flows through, the way mountains have risen and fallen, and risen again.

To say that we must ignore out intelligence and our perceptions is to ignore what faculties we possess at birth. Some would say God gave you a brain, so use it. Does God want you to live with your head stuck in the sand, believing that man is so special he cant possibly be related to other living things? Learn some humility.

Posted By: NITRO777

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/30/06 16:13

I accept the age of the universe and the age of the earth, although I doubt radiometric dating methods because of the massive amounts of inconsistencies and contradictions. However I can see the age of the universe and the big bang by simply measuring the motion of the stars and that it is clear that it all started expanding from a certain point. None of this contradicts the bible in any way. Adam was biblically placed at around 6000 BC which is arguably around the time of the dawn of civilization. The bible makes a clear delineation of an unspecified time period between the creation of heavens and earth and creation of homo sapien.

However there is no clear answer on how the big bang started. There are no clear answers on how or where matter began, or why physical law operates.

There are no clear answers on how life began. The probability of all the elements of life gathering from all points of the universe into one environment capable of sustaining life are staggering, and then to add the probablility of some electrical energy "jumpstarting" this cell is so staggering that the mere 4 billion years of this earth is not nearly enough time for this to occur.

The probabilities are so low that you would need an infinite amount of time for the universe to exist in order for it to occur. And in that case, if you had an infinite universe, then there would be all kinds of various assemblies hanging around.

Probability takes the time factor into consideration. 4 billion years is just too small of a time factor for the probability of the essential elements of life to assemble from all parts of the universe.

We havent even begun to discuss what processes your newly born single-celled organism must undergo to become a sexual reproducer. We havent even begun to wonder how our little cell can exist for more than one second.

Posted By: Matt_Aufderheide

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/30/06 16:39

You dont know anything about the probabilities of this. How do you calculate this, using your special probability drive?

But seriously, you argument is flawed because I can easily say that the fact that we exist discounts entirely the improbability of us existing. It's like if I throw a stone in random direction, I say that it seems too improbable that it would land where it did, because there are so may other places it could have landed. But the fact is, it had to land somewhere. Probability is an odd thing that way. So using that logic, I would say the probability of us having evolved on earth is 100%, because it happened. You cant use probability to prove or disprove evolution.

Think about it, how many planets are there in the Universe? Probably a number too vast to comprehend. The chances that life would evolve on them all? Very low probably, but what about the chance that life would evolve on a few of them (which is still going to be an enormous number)? Likely to be high. The chance that life would evolve on one of them, 100%, because here we are.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So I would ask you a question then, without any malice. Why dont you accept the scientific result that led to evolutionary theory?

What about another theory, say General Relativity? Do you accept this theory? There is a lot more direct evidence for evolution by natural selection than there is for General Relativity, yet most scientist accept both. Why dont lay poeple attack General Relativity? It is far more troubling than evolution, because it is counter-intuitive. How can space-time be curved?

But the reason most poeple dont have a problem with it, is because it clearly has nothing to do with the Bible, nor does it say anything about Man's place in the universe.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What should be apparent then to poeple reading this thread, is that Nitro77 and and others dont really care about the scientific value of evolution, and the psuedoscience they use to argue against it, but in fact the reason they hate the theory is an emotional one

They cant stand the fact that Man isn't something special and unique, that Man is just an animal, that Man is a bunch of chemicals and organic junk stuck together. We are fragile, tenuous beings, with many faults inherent in our bodies. Why do we have to crap and eat so much? Why do we get sick, why do children die for no reason, why are they born deformed, or retarded?

Why? I dont know, and I dont really care. Man is more than the sum of his parts, what you call a soul I call self-purpose.

Posted By: NITRO777

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/30/06 17:44

I dont hate the theory, I hate the fact that it is preached in schools as a fact when it falls from every leg it stands on.

Quote:

They cant stand the fact that Man isn't something special and unique, that Man is just an animal, that Man is a bunch of chemicals and organic junk stuck together. We are fragile, tenuous beings, with many faults inherent in our bodies. Why do we have to crap and eat so much? Why do we get sick, why do children die for no reason, why are they born deformed, or retarded?

Even from a scientific viewpoint man is unique. We are the only ones who can speak or create. We are much different from the animals. We dominate the animals.

Quote:

What about another theory, say General Relativity? Do you accept this theory? There is a lot more direct evidence for evolution by natural selection than there is for General Relativity, yet most scientist accept both. Why dont lay poeple attack General Relativity? It is far more troubling than evolution, because it is counter-intuitive. How can space-time be curved?

LOL. I will be doing very well if I understand enough about general relativity to refute Einstein. However I find myself more than capable to refute you and jcl.

And in your case, with all of these oddball statements of yours, I consider it childsplay.

Posted By: AndersA

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/30/06 18:46

Quote:

I dont hate the theory, I hate the fact that it is preached in schools as a fact when it falls from every leg it stands on.

But General Relativity and Quantum Physics are also "preached in schools". Why do you think evolution falls from more legs than those rather bizarre theories?

Quote:

Even from a scientific viewpoint man is unique. We are the only ones who can speak or create. We are much different from the animals. We dominate the animals.

Birds can fly on their own. Birds dominate man!? Not really, but every species have their own merits.

You do realize, by the way, that the only reason you can fly at all is that there are scientists who dare to think on their own?

Posted By: Matt_Aufderheide

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/30/06 19:18

Quote:

LOL. I will be doing very well if I understand enough about general relativity to refute Einstein. However I find myself more than capable to refute you and jcl. And in your case, with all of these oddball statements of yours, I consider it childsplay.

You missed the point, you are qualified to refute neither Einstein nor Darwin. Darwin is regarded with as high regard (perhaps more) than Einstein by the scientific community. Whereas Einstein extended our knowledge of physics, and gave us a new way of understanding, Darwin essentially brought about modern biological sciences. His ideas form the basis of all modern biological thought. You cant possibly have modern cladistics without Darwin, you cant explain early humans wihtout Darwin, you cant even explain the lengths of bird's beaks without Darwin. One of the measures of the worth of a scientific theory is it's abilioty to predict. Darwin predicted that the easliest humans would be found in Africa, and indeed they were (australopithicus, ardipithicus, etc). Darwin predicted intermediate forms, and they were found, even in his lifetime (archeopterix).

If you think evolution falls on the legs it stands on, you clearly have NO idea of what evolutionary theory is. Seriously, educate yourself on it and then come back and talk to us. Have you read Origin of Species? Have you looked at the fossil record at all? Are you aware of all the 'intermediate' forms that have been found that directly contradict your belief that they havent been found?

There are so many evidences of evolution that I couldnt even begin to list them. But you have completely ignored everyhting I have said. What about my examples of the coconut crab for instance, having both non-functioning gills, and air-breathing "lungs" that still need some water to function? How do you account for this unless you accept that at some point this animal's ancestors lived wholely in the water?

What statements do i make that are "oddball"? Everything I've said represents the mainstream of scietific thinking. Nothing you've said has refuted anything I or JCL has said. You seem to reject evolutionary theory out of hand for emotional reasons, not valid scientific reasons. You keep saying that evolution fails, but you havent given any specific reason why.

All your arguements have been gone through more than a hundred years ago,and they have all been dealt with. There are arguments you are not even aware of that are more interesting.

What about Schrodinger's idea that evolution violates the third law of thermodynamics(entropy in a system)? This is an interesting attack, because on the surface it makes some sense. The idea is that no complex closed system can go on indefinitely; it has to degrade over time. Therfore evolution shouldnt produce more ordered lifeforms, instead it should produce increasingly degenerate ones.

This attack has been dealt with easily though, because evolution is not a closed system-- it is instead constantly changing and being influenced by outside sources. We just conveniently view as closed for experimental purposes.

All you can do is find little inconsistencies and nitpick, or use false premises(like some assumed probability of life evolving) and try to demolish the whole edifice. You also seem to love straw man arguements (like man evolved from monkeys).

You like to attack our arguements as being "oddball" or silly, or nonsensical, without giving adequate reasons why. You seem to not understand the most basic facts of modern science, and are unwilling to learn.

Posted By: Neonotso

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/30/06 19:18

Quote:

So why does the Pope accept scientific evolution?

First of all, I wouldn't consider evolution scientific... After all, why do you think it's called the "theory" of evolution. Because that's what it is, an unproven theory.

Anyway, the pope...

Personally, I don't care all that much what the pope believes, because I consider some (if not most) Catholics to not be true Christians.

Quote:

I suppose your main problem is that you are confusing Christianity with creationism.

Well, in my opinion, I'd say that if you don't believe the Bible, in it's original text (Greek, Hebrew, whatever) to be completely true, than you're not really a good Christian either... Though you might still go to Heaven (depending on what you find in the Bible to be false).

For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. - Hebrews 4:12

Any questions?

Posted By: AndersA

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/30/06 19:38

Quote:

First of all, I wouldn't consider evolution scientific... After all, why do you think it's called the "theory" of evolution. Because that's what it is, an unproven theory.

And so are General Relativity, Quantum Physics, the Standard Model, you name it. They are all unproven theories in the sence that no one has presented a proof for them. According to your logic, they are not scientific then, or what? So what is scientific? Could you please tell me one thing?

Edit:
I just realized that "unproven" may have a much weaker interpretation in english than in my native language. Of cource all the theories mentioned are accepted as excelent models for predicting and understanding our world, but no one have ever presented a proof in a deep sence for any of them. Eventually they will also probably gradually change.

Sorry for the confusion

Posted By: Matt_Aufderheide

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/30/06 19:59

Many poeple dont understand what the word "theory" means in sciece. There is a difference betweeen an "unproven" theory (or hypothesis) and an accepted theory. Evolution is accepted, and has been proven as well as any theory of this nature can be.

In fact Darwin's theory is far more established than say, the Standard Model of particle physics. There are open problems in the Standard Model, that everyone agrees with. There is no explanation of how gravity works, so by excluding them, the Standard Model is NECCESARILY incomplete. Does this make it 100% wrong? Of course not.

A theory is just a model of a natural process, it's not a thing or an end in itself. It allows us to understand the natural world better. And the Standard Model and Darwinian evolution through natural selection do that very well, up to a point.

The main way to disprove or challenge a theory is present scientific data that directly contradict it. So far no evidence has contradicted evolution. On the contrary quite the opposite has happened-- the theory has been validated time after time by new discoveries-- in genetics, molecular, paleontolgy, and comparative anatomy.

Darwinian evolution is one of the oldest and most rock-solid scientific theories there is. Is it complete? Certainly not. Darwin doesnt explain everything, like how evolutionary rates are not consistent in every given time and place. Gould attempted to explain that with punctuated equilibrium. Darwin doesnt have a concept of genetics and gives no means by which adapted traits are passed on. Gregor Mendel and his genetic theory did that when it was rediscovered long after Darwin was dead.

Mendel had no idea of how genetic information was passed on-- only with discovery of DNA and the foundations of molecular biology did we begin to understand that.

The remarkable thing is, Darwin knew nothing of these of these things, yet when they were discovered, they only reinforced and fleshed out Darwin's theory. This is what makes it so compelling to us now, more than even when it was developed a century and a half ago.

None of your creationist, biblical GARBAGE helps us understand ANY of these things. Only Darwin does, a humble, quite, sad man who languished for years before publishing a theory he knew would be attacked visciously. He knew he was right, not because he had faith, but because he observed the facts, and induced the truth.

I just wish poeple wouldn't argue against science when they DONT UNDERSTAND science. Having a science degree doesn't make you scientific, just like being a priest doesnt make you a christian--how you think and act does.

Posted By: Anonymous

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/30/06 21:37

"For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. - Hebrews 4:12

Any questions?"

If you want to be credible in this argument please stay away from quoting the bible. Yes its profound and inspiring, and shows the power of God, but evolutionists wont take you seriously if you start saying these verses. It has nothing for them to chew on/think about. Creationists live by faith in things unseen, and evolutionists live by the things which ARE seen.

There is nothing scientific in the bible, which makes it an unscientific resource. God wouldn't fill his book with records of the details of which exact rib he took from Adam, or the speed of the winds which split the red sea. The Bible does not care about the details, which evolutionists thrive on.

Sometimes I think you evolutionists willingly choose to go against a "higher power" in some act of rebellion, just to "fight for a cause", sticking it to the man. You arent revolutionary or more perceptive than the creationists or any other person. All your scientific evidence proves nothing for mankind's future. So what if we did evolve from apes? Now what? You honestly think we can steer our evolution into super beings? Lets hope the nitpickng arrogance of the evolutionsts isnt seen in their majority.

"None of your creationist, biblical GARBAGE helps us understand ANY of these things" Well done Matt.

Its sad to see the amount of "religious arrogant dogma" that is spewed from you evolutionists if a creationist called your scientific research GARBAGE. The sad thing is none of you understand that the bible is 95 percent about morals and spirituality, bettering one's soul for righteousness. When you call things biblical garbage, your not calling some McGraw hill textbook garbage, your calling someone's way of life garbage.

Which reiterates my standing on this fruitless converstion. It only shows the stupidity of each side, no merits.

Posted By: Neonotso

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/30/06 22:33

Hey, anonymous, btw, I thought of about two things from your last post...

Something I seem to remember reading said that Einstien, as best as I could understand it, actually used the Bible to form his theory of relativity. I think he did something like go into the Greek/Hebrew/whatever-original-language for the Bible in Genesis for the word "light" in two different spots and found that one was more of a "source light" and another a "light from the source" and somehow got his theory from this... Now, I don't remember exactly what it said, but I seem to remember getting that conclusion before.

...Oh, almost forgot...

The other thing I thought of from your post was that I read another thing (do I read a lot?

... Oh wait, did I read this or see on tv or a video/dvd? I don't remember which...

) that one of the ribs in a male (maybe female too?) actually can grow back! Pretty cool, huh?

I'm guessing that's the one God would have used...

Posted By: Ran Man

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/30/06 22:36

Quote:

They cant stand the fact that Man isn't something special and unique, that Man is just an animal

Hey, I love animals!, <see my avatar> but they ain't comparable to us humans.

They simply do not have our intelligence!

Now, when is the last time you seen an ape, for example, make something complicated like a car?

LOL

Hello? Let's be smart people? haha

Posted By: ventilator

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/30/06 22:59

Quote:

How do you think there's so much oil and coal? Well, think about this: A flood comes, people and animals and plants go down to the bottom of the ocean, mud/dirt stuff covers them and with all the pressure... squish! Just wait a while and you've got your massive coal and oil reserves.

hm... you know that it takes much much longer than 6000 years until oil forms? this is a proven fact and rebuts your "the earth is 6000 years old" idea.

Posted By: Irish_Farmer

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/31/06 00:31

I'm anonymous by the way. So, yeah.

Quote:

What about my examples of the coconut crab for instance, having both non-functioning gills, and air-breathing "lungs" that still need some water to function? How do you account for this unless you accept that at some point this animal's ancestors lived wholely in the water?

I love you for bringing this up. Because I'm going to once again use science to show you why your materialistic faith is unfounded.

When I first read this part I thought, 'Man, this might be pretty decent proof towards evolution if its true.' However, unlike you, I prefer to discover things for myself, and pursue the truth instead of simply letting others tell me what the truth is. No offense, but the only way you would use the coconut crab as proof of evolution is if you simply let someone tell you it was proof because in fact the coconut crab is yet another proof that not only is there no such thing as an intermediate adaptation, but there is abundant proof in nature that creatures were created to be perfectly suited to their environment. Not following me? I'll highlight exactly why you're wrong.

Here's a couple links, but don't click them yet. I'll copy and paste a few highlights from them, and then you can click the links to verify that I'm not pulling this stuff from my butt.

http://www.bespokeexperience.com/en/1/coswillancoc.mxs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coconut_crab

edit: I can't find enough information about the larval stage of crabs for now, so I have to leave this statement out. My point still stands just as strong without it anyway, so whatever.

"Afterwards, they live on the ocean floor"

The very same place where they would drown if there GILLS weren't put to good use.

Here's a bit more wisdom from scientists.

"After these 28 days, they leave the ocean permanently and lose the ability to breathe in water."

And lose the ability to breath in water. How, might I ask would they breath in water in the first place? Same as tadpoles: gills. However, unlike tadpoles, they don't completely lose their gills when they mature. So, just because the gills are useless to the adults, doesn't mean they're useless to them altogether. Without the gills, the crab would be extinct within one generation.

Now. If you'll please stop acting like Christians are ignorant and blindly faithful. My 'blind faith' led me to the truth. What did your blind faith do? It misled you.

This is why Christians who understand science find 'materialism' and evolution (not science) to be utterly ridiculous. The only way you can believe in your faith that you've chosen is if you choose to believe a lot of half truths and outright lies.

I could have let myself fall prey to the easy conclusion that the gills were useless, but I thought for a moment, "Maybe there's some point in their life cycle where they become useful." God, in all of his wisdom, adapted these animals perfectly to their environment, not random chance. Believe what you want, but this is yet another illustration of why evolution has no foundation.

Keep 'em coming. Like I said, it only takes a bit of scientific research along with common sense to find the truth that materialists hide from the general public.

You can keep believing in evolution if you want, its your choice, but don't attack christians as if you're above us. We're not the simpletons that the media loves to portray us as. We have the same desire to pursue the truth as anybody else. And I don't care if the pope or any other 'christian' believes in evolution. The Pope himself will have to answer for the lies he helps spread and the souls he's managed to turn away from God in the process, that's for him to deal with. Let's stick to the real issue.

The earth is not billions of years old, and God didn't create life simply to let us be born out of death. If that were so, the entire Bible is compromised and we may as well be animals. In that case, there are no answers in this universe and none of us are better than the most evil of humanity because God has turned his back on us. We weren't created from death, and there's more in our future than death. Nitro, don't compromise that important truth in favor of the views of so called scientists. The truth is on our side.

I challenge anyone on this forum to go back to my original post in this thread and refute ANY of those points. Materialism has no foundation, and while you all love to attack christianity, you failed to defend science on any of the points that I brought up. Quit trying to keep us on the defensive, and if you're so sure you're right, back up your faith with proof. I know you can't, and I'm so sure I'm right that I know that if you actually take the time to research anything I've said you'll realize for yourself that materialism and evolution have no foundation.

But I'm not going to keep discussing this if the only way you people will talk is if its to attack christianity. If christianity is so ridiculous, then let's stick to the scientific. Defend your faith. That's all I ask.

Quote:

So far no evidence has contradicted evolution.

I think I should compile an entire post on the fossil record. Because I'm tired of you guys referring to it, as if the mere mention of it is proof. Use your brain, scientists can't find the real missing links. Lizards with wings? Did it ever occur to scientists that these lizards needed wings to survive? Why do wings automatically mean its intermediate?

If you understood the actual truth behind the fossil record, you would know why it disproves evolution. Go to a museum once. There are all these really amazing dinosaurs, but where are their intermediates? You NEVER see them. Because they don't exist (this is called scientific thinking). You could say that they don't exist because we couldn't possibly find every single intermediate fossil because they don't all become fossilized. Believe that if you want, but you can't form a theory on a lack of evidence. That's unscientific. You either have to find the intermediate fossils, and formulate a theory, or have no theory. You can't formulate a theory and then assume that these fossils exist. That's unscientific and actually its what we Christians love to refer to as circular reasoning.

Ask any scientist to explain to you how we have such a wide variety of these dinosaurs without benefit of a HUGE (or for that matter medium or small) trail of intermediates between them all. They can't answer that question. The lack of evidence logically points to the idea that these animals were simply living at one point, not born from non existent ancestors.

Quote:

because science and the scientific method isn't about proofs

Hmmm...That's scary. I suppose this is how scientists rationalize lying to students all over the entire country.

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he mainstream of Christians for instance, have learned to accept the Bible as an old group of texts, written and compiled by different poeple, and that many parts of it cannot be taken literally, because they are obviously untrue.

How can someone who doesn't even believe in the Word of God begin to say they understand something about it? If we're not allowed to talk about evolution because we're too ignorant to understand it, then leave the Word of God out of this.

Quote:

You dont know anything about the probabilities of this. How do you calculate this, using your special probability drive?

Actually there is a probability of proteins and amino acids randomly forming. If you compare that to the law of probability (a number set so arbitrarily high that any chance above it is considered scientifically absured), you see that the chance of a protein randomly forming is impossible. The number for the law of probability is 10 to the 51 I believe (I'm using a whole number instead of a fraction to keep things simple). The chance of a protein randomly forming doesn't even come close. Its at least three times as high. Thus making it scientifically absured. Look it up.

And by the way, that's just one protein. Now imagine all the building blocks of life randomly coming together to form a perfectly formed cell and we're talking beyond impossible. Time alone isn't the catalyst for a miracle, which is what life is.

Quote:

I would say the probability of us having evolved on earth is 100%, because it happened.

Do you not see the circular reasoning of this? If probability says we can't have randomly appeared on earth, then wouldn't it be logical to assume we didn't? Saying something had to have happened just because you think it did is, of course, circular reasoning. I could say God created us because here we are. That would also be circular reasoning. However, unlike your side of the argument, I actually have the proof to back it up.

Quote:

So far no evidence has contradicted evolution. On the contrary quite the opposite has happened-- the theory has been validated time after time by new discoveries-- in genetics, molecular, paleontolgy, and comparative anatomy.

To show you why you're wrong, you have to understand that scientists believe the theory is true before proving it. They simply ONLY find truth that collaborates their view. I'll take the theory apart slowly but surely in my posts. But I don't have the time or space on this forum to do it all at once.

The fact is, more and more scientists are starting to understand that spontaneous creation of life and therefore evolution are falling apart the more that science discovers about life. Start at the beginning. What scientists have discovered about the origin of life paints a pretty dreary picture of their theories. I'm sure you won't actually research it, because you're already sure you're right. But I'll dig up that link again anyway, in case you feel like doing a bit of critical thinking.

Here's an interesting link where a few scientists point out that not only is every experiment that attempts to prove that life started randomly failing miserably, but that science textbooks are outright lying about the results to convince our nation's youth that evolution is true.

http://www.arn.org/docs/mills/gm_originoflifeandevolution.htm

This is not only a problem, this is literally brainwashing. Thanks materialism.

Posted By: Neonotso

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/31/06 00:53

Good job Irish_Farmer!

(non-sarcastic) And that whole thing about proteins and life forming randomly: That is, of course, just one good example of why evolution couldn't be true...

Just think how much the "scientists" have basically failed trying to make life... or even trying to clone animals... or the chiwawa (definitely spelled wrong, I think). Did you know that the way the "scientists" made the chiwawa, from what I heard, was they just removed stuff from it's genetics (or whatever). It's not like they added stuff, they just took stuff away... My point is, if we as humans can't even make life, or even a good clone or new species (or sub-species: whatever the right term is) then how could it seem possible that "chance" or "randomness" made life?

Seriously, if someone can completely prove evolution, go ahead, but at the moment, I don't see how it could be true.

To somewhat quote something else I read: Don't let your pride or what you've been taught get in the way from discovering the truth.

Everyone try to stop going for what "feels right" and look to the facts... And I mean the "real" facts, not the ones people claim are true but can't stand up to attacks...

Even in the Bible, when it's talking about the Armor of God, the part of the Armor for truth is the belt. In roman armor, the belt is what basically kept the armor together, without it you become defenseless... the same thing is true in real life if you don't have truth!

- Just adding a note that this post was edited and has more stuff in it now.

Posted By: Grimber

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/31/06 01:11

is this 6000 years old earth calculation use the same methods that over the past two thousand years the ever changing predictions of when the 2nd comming of christ is predicted to happen?

I do believe that theologic scholars seem to keep missing the mark on the year it suppost to happen. with allot of followers having to suffer because they happend to give away all their earthly possesions time and again just prior to these dates then have to find a way to live afterwards

yes, i know thologists figure this number of years by supposedly counting the generations backwards though the bible. So does this include the 73 books of the roman chatholic books of teh bible. or the 66 books of the king james version or the origial 81 books of teh King James bible before the arch bishop of cantabury removed 16 ?

or the original 600 books when emporer Constantine commisioned the first bible to be written. ( which was later weeded down to eliminatate all the pagansium in the original christian religion)

does it take into account other books from various denomitaions?

does it include the parts of the hebrew texts (Koran) the christans didn't adopt when making the old testiment?

see, creationists have a serious tendancy to PICK and choose and just so SIMPLY ignore or toss aside anything they just don't like. Because it doesn;t fit your pre concieved ideals.

You know its amazing how many of the 7 deadly sins chreationists constantly break. considering thier entire goal is to find their own self richousness ( yet again a sin of your own religion)

'Creationists live by faith in things unseen'
nope, creationists believe in things they are told.
christains ( at least when I went to church) are told to find god and christ in the world around us. ( not in the 'unseen' )

Gallop poll on creationisum and evolution

40% of americans do not have a correct understanding of evolution ( this thread shows allot of evidance of that)
nearly 50% of americans do not have a clear understanding of creationisum ( again this thread shows allot of even so called believers know so little of thier own 'belief')

40% of american scientists believe in god
5% of american scientists believe in creationisum
(scientists polled consisted of mainstream sciences like biology and geology, and non mainstream sciences like health science, computer science engineering etc)

in otherwords. take some time and ACTUALY learn something WITHOUT a biased opinion going into it.

learn evolution
learn creationsium

learn how a specific science ACTUALY works before making biased, ignorant argumentitive claims

you believe in god, great. god gave you a brain, use it.

"Now, when is the last time you seen an ape, for example, make something complicated like a car?

LOL Hello? Let's be smart people? haha"

whens the last time you seen apes wage war, imprison, torture and murder millions of thier own speices because one group thinks 'thier god is better then other groups god, and if you don't follow ours your less than human'

whos the smart one?

at least apes live in harmoney with its enviroment and socialy between its own race, only becoming violent for self defense.

"but no animals have souls/spirits - whatever the right word is and I think it would be very hard to make them... and what about thoughts? Animals don't think, as far as I know"

and how can you prove you DO have a soul or that animals do not? you cannot. this is just an unfounded statement of self-supeiriority
animals don;t think? you've never been around animals then. animals think, have feelings, fear, humor, understand death and even some understand and will commit pre meditated murder. and not just primeapes either

Posted By: Neonotso

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/31/06 01:22

Ok, I might agree on the animals with feelings.

But, about the soul/spirit and thoughts thing: I guess I just don't know. We know we have thoughts, but to my knowledge, we can't read the minds of animals yet...

But, of course, you didn't even mention the other things we mentioned: sun/moon distance, proteins and life forming randomly... sure, I'm not rushing you, but do you have anything on those topics to back up your side?

Ok, about the 6,000 years thing: I think this might have been from the KJV Bible. It might be even more accurate in the original language, but, for english, I'd say this would be about the best translation of the Bible. Also, for those of you Bible people, there's a verse in the Bible that says something like, to God a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years is like a day.

And, of course, in Genesis, the universe is made in 6 days, then God rests on the 7th. I think this is not only an example on how we should live our lives but also has something to do with the other verse I referenced... And, although, I do have an opinion on this, I'm pretty sure you evolutionists would find it boring and absurd...

and that's fine... I'd rather be part of "the few".

Posted By: Blattsalat

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/31/06 01:32

proving evolution is simple:

evolution is nothing more then random reproduction in masses and sorting of the result. It has nothing to to with apes giving birth to humans.

simple example:
white pairs get white babys, black ones black.
Put hundred white and hundred black pairs into a hot climate zone (desert). Let them make babies (huh, sounds like a new verhooven movie

).
If the impact of the sunrays is high enough and there is no other difference between black and white people as a logical consequence the white ones will have a much harder life and die sooner and get harmed by the conditions.
On the long run this means a lot less white people and a bigger percentage black ones.
In any extreme condition one group can die out.

evolution has done its job

its is not more and less then a huge beta test run with a little harder consequences.

species are generated randomly and they disappear as well "the fitest will survive".

evolution is neither contra any religion (because it doesnt determine who creates the beings) nor is it a good example to prove any side.

also the difference between animals and humans aint that big:
the answer to the question if a ape can build a car is no. but neither of us could do it as well.

humans benefit from the bigest gift ever: information exchange thru generations.
The word is the ultimate key for development.
If apes could write books, the could also on the long run build cars, make clothes and write posts into conitec forums.

Though once in a while i have the feeling some allready do

cheers

Posted By: Irish_Farmer

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/31/06 01:41

Grimber, is your scientific defense of 'science's' lies to attack christianity? I find that peculiar. Kind of a strange way to prove your theory. Your behavior is consistent with something like a faith vs. faith type debate, not science vs. faith. I've been trying to keep this scientific the whole time, and strangely enough the ones on the side of science have been having a hard time keeping focused on science itself.

I don't think I can stomach writing out another long post, but I'll respond to everything you've had to say at some point. Luckily, since most of it is just opinion it shouldn't take too long. I'll just have to avoid getting into the whole, "Oh yeah, well your side did these horrible things" kind of argument.

Quote:

evolution is nothing more then random reproduction in masses and sorting of the result. It has nothing to to with apes giving birth to humans.

I recommend you do some research into genetics before saying that.

No one has a problem with random changes within animals. That's observable, and its called micro evolution. However, creatures slowly sprouting wings is unprovable, and that's where the problem comes in. We see a lizard without wings, a lizard with wings, and then birds and we say that's evolution. All we've managed to discover are three kinds of distinct species. No record of change.

Quote:

white pairs get white babys, black ones black.
Put hundred white and hundred black pairs into a hot climate zone (desert). Let them make babies (huh, sounds like a new verhooven movie ).
If the impact of the sunrays is high enough and there is no other difference between black and white people as a logical consequence the white ones will have a much harder life and die sooner and get harmed by the conditions.
On the long run this means a lot less white people and a bigger percentage black ones.
In any extreme condition one group can die out.

This is why people believe evolution. They don't even know what it is.

You've pointed out what's called natural selection. In fact, on the genetic level you've argued against evolution. You start out with the genetics for white skin and the genetics for black skin, and at the end of your experiment you'll (according to you) end up with only black skin. That's called a loss of genetic data. We still have humans, there's no change to something radically different, except those humans just lost the genetic ability to have white skin. How is that evolution?

This is what I mean when I say public school science textbooks destroy critical thinking. I wasn't told how to figure that stuff out, I just know enough common sense to figure out that that's not evolution.

Believe me, though, if it was that easy to observe evolution, then there would be no point for a debate.

I'll be back soon, but until then...

Posted By: Neonotso

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/31/06 01:44

Just in case you guys missed it, I edited my last post. It has one more paragraph on it.

EDIT:

Quote:

40% of americans do not have a correct understanding of evolution ( this thread shows allot of evidance of that)
nearly 50% of americans do not have a clear understanding of creationisum ( again this thread shows allot of even so called believers know so little of thier own 'belief')

I'll agree that with those poll results.

Even if you're a supposed "Christian", it is likely you're not what I've been reffering to as a "true Christian". Why do think I mentioned "the few". There's a very small amount of people who are Christians, to my knowledge, and even fewer who actually have a correct understanding of what a Christian should be and probably even smaller who actually are what a Christian is supposed to be... I think, overall, the world hates Christians.

But, oh well, whatcha gonna do... after all, the world is corrupt.

- I just reffered to two different "world"s at the end of my post. The first one is the people, and the second one is more of the system governing the world... I don't want to have people yelling at me or something saying, "Oh, so now you think that all the people in the world are corrupt?!".

Posted By: Blattsalat

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/31/06 02:23

@Irish_Farmer:

genetics are not evolution!
genetics is required for reprodution and the morphing reults of it (white pairs get white babies). But the evolution itself is just sorting them out.

about the lizards that can fly:
do you have a dog? how do you think this dog or species was created or where does it come from?!
If evolution and reproduction morghing was just a theory none of us whould have dogs, cats, cattle or sheep.

If this can be made thru human hand what makes you think this wouldnt happen by itslef on the long run....lets say a billion years.

and most important:
-->except those humans just lost the genetic ability to have white skin. How is that evolution?

as you can "lose" those genetic abilities you gain others. and this can end in being able to grow feathers or wings (though you dont influence it).
Like skin shade any genetic data can be dominant and lead to mutations. If that mutations pay off the logical consequence is that this genetic pool will spread. Hence reproducing more of this genetic pool this again increases the chances of new mutations. and so forth

from the skin shade this can lead to anything
and this is exactly how evolution and genetics work...though lots tend to mix them up into one "theory"

and it doesnt matter if you believe in god or not

cheers

Posted By: Irish_Farmer

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/31/06 03:25

Quote:

genetics are not evolution!

*sigh* I never said that.

However, evolution is all about genetics. Evolution supposedly causes extreme manipulations of the genetic material of every living thing on earth. You need to research genetics before pretending you know anything about evolution. I'm not an expert on genetics, but I don't need to be to understand why you're wrong. It simply takes logic.

Quote:

But the evolution itself is just sorting them out.

Again. Get your facts right. What you're speaking of is natural selection. VERY different from evolution. Natural selection is the process by which the weakest creatures (creatures with the worst genetic data) get weeded out. Its actually a problem for evolution because natural selection works a lot faster than evolution and proves that if anything the genetic structure of living things on earth is slowly breaking down. Not slowly building up.

Quote:

do you have a dog? how do you think this dog or species was created or where does it come from?!
If evolution and reproduction morghing was just a theory none of us whould have dogs, cats, cattle or sheep.

Simply put, dogs are just another version of the wolf. We genetically forged the wolf until we had a plethora of kinds of dogs.

If you're saying us having many different kinds of dogs proves evolution, then you need to get your facts straight...again. All we've done is genetically weaken the wolf to get broken down versions of it. Can you imagine if we actually unleashed these animals into the wild?

Furthermore, this just proves my point. No matter how much we force these changes within a species, we still can't force those dogs to become birds. That's what we're discussing here. You have a lot of catching up to do.

Maybe instead of saying evolution is the only possible answer, you should consider the possibility that we were all created. You're getting dangerously close to the argument, "Evolution has to be true because there's no other answer." We all know why that's a logical fallacy, even if we believe in evolution. There has to be proof. So far, you have provided none.

All you keep illustrating is a loss of genetic data. That's the EXACT OPPOSITE of evolution. Take this statement for instance:

Quote:

as you can "lose" those genetic abilities you gain others. and this can end in being able to grow feathers or wings (though you dont influence it).

Back up your statement. Throw some of these black and white people into a desert and wait until they sprout wings. Don't tell me that you know it can happen, because that means nothing without proof.

Posted By: Ran Man

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/31/06 03:31

Quote:

hm... you know that it takes much much longer than 6000 years until oil forms?

Yeah, it takes about 30 minutes or less to make oil at the link below.

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If a 175-pound man fell into one end , he would come out the other end as 38 pounds of oil, 7 pounds of gas, and 7 pounds of minerals, as well as 123 pounds of sterilized water

http://www.mindfully.org/Energy/2003/Anything-Into-Oil1may03.htm

Quote:

at least apes live in harmoney with its enviroment and socialy between its own race

No, there are plenty of "ape fights" amongst them.

Only because they are so dumb, they don't try to rise up and conquer the earth. Although, hollywood did do that in the "PLANET OF THE APES" movie, huh?

Aggh, now that's a nice ape, huh? lol

Posted By: ICEman

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/31/06 03:44

So now this turns from one futile debate to another.. ::sigh:: Dominoes anyone?

Posted By: Anonymous

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/31/06 04:40

"is this 6000 years old earth calculation use the same methods that over the past two thousand years the ever changing predictions of when the 2nd comming of christ is predicted to happen?

I do believe that theologic scholars seem to keep missing the mark on the year it suppost to happen. with allot of followers having to suffer because they happend to give away all their earthly possesions time and again just prior to these dates then have to find a way to live afterwards"

Who cares? What does this solve in the debate? Some people do terrible things and waste their time disobeying what the Bible says. That's just the way things go.

That's not making an excuse for the guy, but there's nothing that can be done about it. Those people will have to answer for their own actions.

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yes, i know thologists figure this number of years by supposedly counting the generations backwards though the bible. So does this include the 73 books of the roman chatholic books of teh bible. or the 66 books of the king james version or the origial 81 books of teh King James bible before the arch bishop of cantabury removed 16 ?

Where is this information coming from?

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does it take into account other books from various denomitaions?

There are usually pretty simple stories behind those other books. For instance, someone thinking they found a special add on to the bible. Its pretty easy to understand why many of these books are fake. But I can't say too much. I'm somewhat ignorant to the origins and changes to the bible caused by all these different sects.

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does it include the parts of the hebrew texts (Koran)

Hebrew and Arab texts at the same time? How is that possible? The Koran isn't part of the Bible even to the Jews. The Koran is the arab book.

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ee, creationists have a serious tendancy to PICK and choose and just so SIMPLY ignore or toss aside anything they just don't like. Because it doesn;t fit your pre concieved ideals.

That's strange, because it seems exactly opposite to me. The evolutionists are the ones spreading lies by picking and choosing which 'proof' to focus on. If you're mad because some guy added or took away from the bible, how does that change the truth that materialism is wrong and we were created in our present forms?

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You know its amazing how many of the 7 deadly sins chreationists constantly break. considering thier entire goal is to find their own self richousness ( yet again a sin of your own religion)

I'm not going to speak for anyone else at the forum, but for me its all for the glory of God (gasp). It could be argued that, since you're simply debating for the sake of debating, you're the one doing it for selfish reasons. I'm not saying you are, but I don't have the motive here.

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nope, creationists believe in things they are told.

Man, this is frustrating. I'm not even going to point out why you're wrong because all you're trying to do is belittle people like me, and that's despicable. Keep your hate-filled opinions to yourself, especially when they have no bearing on the discussion. You're simply going out of your way to attack people.

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40% of americans do not have a correct understanding of evolution ( this thread shows allot of evidance of that)
nearly 50% of americans do not have a clear understanding of creationisum ( again this thread shows allot of even so called believers know so little of thier own 'belief')

40% of american scientists believe in god
5% of american scientists believe in creationisum
(scientists polled consisted of mainstream sciences like biology and geology, and non mainstream sciences like health science, computer science engineering etc)

Quit falling back on the 'bandwagon fallacy'. Who cares about other people. It doesn't change the truth. Large groups of people do a lot of crazy things (or believe a lot of crazy things), but that's not my problem. And its not yours either. I don't run my life based on other people's choices. And I'm certainly not going to have my faith questioned by a poll.

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whens the last time you seen apes wage war, imprison, torture and murder millions of thier own speices because one group thinks 'thier god is better then other groups god, and if you don't follow ours your less than human'

It sounds to me like you have a problem with people, not God. I'm sorry to hear that, but I can understand where you're coming from. We live in a pretty terrible world, and evil comes in a lot of forms (even dressed in sheeps clothing). But again, you're avoiding the subject at hand. Its pointless to get stuck on the past. Since most murdering is done by non-christians, why shouldn't I conclude that by ratio alone, non-christians are much worse. Because that's ridiculous. Only racists cast aside the individual to stereotype the whole. I'm not saying you're racist, but its just as illogical to completely assume you understand me as a christian or any christian for that matter because some lunatics decided to kill some people in the name of God. How about instead of focusing on the past, we learn from it and stop stereotyping people. Its never led to anything good.

Posted By: Irish_Farmer

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/31/06 04:43

Okay. That last post by anonymous was me. However, the top post in page 14 of the thread wasn't me. I don't know who that was.

Posted By: Blattsalat

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/31/06 04:43

man that was a baaaaaaaaaaad movie (it almost ruind the class of the original).

@:irish_farmer:
-->Evolution supposedly causes extreme manipulations of the genetic material

thats the big problem because this is not true!
there are no genetic "manipulations" when we talk about evolution. And thats why a lot of people think that evolution is something like "oh, i need wings. lets demand them long enough and they will grow!".

evolution is a passive process. Thus it cant be denied. Denying it would be like saying the sun doesnt rise every day. Not talking about stellar physics or gravity but just the fact about what happens every days.

Evolution is not active. Even the "sorting out the weakest dna" is a.) wrong (its the none fitting and not adjustable dna and not the weakest...humans are the best example for this) and b.) and not forced by the evolution.

The genetics that happen are simply "bad" copies of the original. If you want to go down to the bottom, humans are nothing more then genetic mistakes.
If you put together A and another A and you want a third A as a result this is how reproduction works.
Now once in a while (with the impact of a ton of reasons) A+A is not A anymore but B.

Now if you have enough of this B�s they will form another gene pool like A did. Now you will have A+A and B+B and A+B.
Time then and a lot of factores decides how and how well or even if A or B should "survive".
B can be a failure and vanish but it also can replace A, or stay side by side and later on form C pools.

This is the idea of evolution. And this is also why genetics are not evolution.

The problem here is that people claim that either evolution is right or god exists. Though both are possible at the same time without any problem.

also about the animals: dog are not just weakened wolfs but a completely redone sub species. Setting them free into the wilderness doesnt make wolfs of them anymore but something different. And this also proves one more time the theory.

Posted By: Irish_Farmer

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/31/06 05:28

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This is the idea of evolution. And this is also why genetics are not evolution.

This is the last time I'll say this. I never said genetics were evolution. That statement doesn't even make grammatical sense. Evolution affect genetics. There's an important link. You can't say evolution doesn't affect genetics because you can't have a lizard evolve into a bird without some kind of genetic change.

However, its obvious from your posts that you have absolutely NO CLUE what evolution is. You started out citing examples of natural selection, and now you started mixing natural selection with mutations (mutations are in a sense evolution although the idea of evolution encompasses more than that).

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there are no genetic "manipulations" when we talk about evolution.

There would have to be. If life started out single celled (which evolution asks us to believe), then it didn't have the data for wings, skin, hair or anything else. Something would have had to manipulate the DNA to cause these things to appear. To add to it if you will.

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evolution is a passive process.

Its impossible for evolution to be a passive process. Otherwise a lizard wouldn't be able to grow wings. Something has to act upon the lizard to cause it to attain a code it didn't have before. Because the only thing we've been able to actually observe naturally are creatures losing codes. That's counterproductive.

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Thus it cant be denied. Denying it would be like saying the sun doesnt rise every day. Not talking about stellar physics or gravity but just the fact about what happens every days.

Except we can actually observe the sun setting. No one has seen a lizard become a bird. Good luck proving it, especially without a fossil record to back you up.

Again, it sounds to me like you're talking about natural selection. Scientists themselves will admit that evolution (micro evolution) is unobservable. If you're going to insist on saying its fact, give me proof. No more words, just proof. Show me a case where a crab became a beetle. Otherwise you have nothing except your opinion.

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humans are nothing more then genetic mistakes.

And yet, here we are running our planet. Doesn't that sound more like we were created, if we managed to do the impossible? Because if its strictly genetics, then the weakest ALWAYS die off. No ifs ands or buts.

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If you put together A and another A and you want a third A as a result this is how reproduction works.
Now once in a while (with the impact of a ton of reasons) A+A is not A anymore but B.

That example is far too simplified. Actually, based on everything you've said, and the actual evidence we're dealing with equations more like this.

AAAABBBBCCCC + AAAABBBBCCCC = AAABBBBCC

That's a bad example too, but its closer to the OBSERVABLE truth. You're jumping quite a gap by saying A+A = B.

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dog are not just weakened wolfs but a completely redone sub species.

Define a sub species. If a dog isn't its own standalone species then it would have to be derived from a wolf. Dogs are naturally genetically weaker than wolves. You don't have to take my word for it. Ask breeders. All you do to get a dog is breed animals for the specific traits you want. That's still NOT EVOLUTION. You just lose some of the original wolf traits, and slowly but surely you get something less. That's not to say dogs are incomplete, it just means they are lesser versions of a wolf. In the end you haven't created a horse or a bird or a banana. You've just lost some of the original wolf from the code to get something that's much weaker. The dogs aren't starting to sprout wings, they're still restricted by the original code from the wolf. NOTHING NEW IS BEING GAINED HERE. Its not a difficult concept. You're proving a change, but not the change required to meet the requisites of evolution. Its not evolution. Ask a scientist. They'll better be able to illustrate the difference to you.

Can someone who actually believes evolution and knows a thing or two about it set this guy straight? Other than that I'm done. Sorry, guy, but you're either going to have to research for yourself and find out the deal with your 'proof', because I'm not gonna keep pointing out the same thing to you. I really shouldn't even have gone on about it for this long.

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Though both are possible at the same time without any problem.

God and evolution don't mix. I hate to have to point this out, but if God created us that means he actually exists and that means that the bible will have to at least paint a partial picture of him. It definately doesn't paint a picture of a God that abandoned us shortly after creating us. He's been involved in our lives each and every day from the beginning. The Bible is pretty explicit about when man was created and it wasn't from some bacteria floating in a soup. Translations or not, its hard to mistake the two scenarios.

Posted By: Anonymous

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/31/06 05:47

"'Creationists live by faith in things unseen'
nope, creationists believe in things they are told.
christains ( at least when I went to church) are told to find god and christ in the world around us. ( not in the 'unseen' )"

Read 2 Corinthians 5:7. Oh no wait, what do you care Grimber? This is just religious dogma aint it?

And I assume you are an archeologist who writes books about evolution and intermediary species. Obviously you are getting your information straight from the field and not being fed by textbooks, and not being TOLD by scientists and documented research. No ones telling you, you get your research yourself, and grow cows/pigs in your backyard for your own homemade cheesburgers. Well done Grimber, trying to point out a hypocrit only revealing yourself as one.

If you did read the bible at all, whatever religion you are, it repeatedly explains the saved person's faith in a kingdom not of this world, cause this world was made sin. A CHRISTian goes after Christ, forsaking his worldly possessions/desires. Im explaining this not in an effort to shove this doctrine down your throat for the sake of this evolution/creation argument, but just clarifying your misunderstanding of the bible.

Personally, I think the system of all living things and the state of the universe is too perfect(dont give me that whining about humans causing war and bloodshed, I'm talking about physical reality, not morality) to be a cause of a random explosion, or a species growing wings to adapt to its environment.

Posted By: NITRO777

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/31/06 06:10

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Like skin shade any genetic data can be dominant and lead to mutations. If that mutations pay off the logical consequence is that this genetic pool will spread. Hence reproducing more of this genetic pool this again increases the chances of new mutations. and so forth

True evolution(not micro-evolution) depends upon mutations, it is one of the legs which it stands on. Yet mutations have never been found to add genetic information to an offspring, and the majority of time mutation is harmful.

The only time mutation has been beneficial has been when microorganisms have mutated to produce antibiotics. These are not superior evolved creatures, they only have resistance to infectious disease because of a kind of neutrality in their genome. There is no new DNA, just unreactive genes.

Regardless, other than this, mutation has not been observed to produce any beneficial results in any species. It is a thouroughly untested unscientific assertion to believe that we evolved through mutation.

Its also sad to see that most here seem to have no knowledge of the difference between micro evolution(adaption) and evolution.

The difference lies within the processes which occur within a species or one species evolving into another. In other words micro evolution has never been observed to work outside of a species.

What is a species? Taxonomy is not an exact science, but for the purposes of the creation vs evolution debate a species can be defined as those which can reproduce and have offspring. A wolf and a dog are in the same group. You cannot talk about differences within a species as evolution, it is adaptation.

Posted By: ello

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/31/06 08:57

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... Even from a scientific viewpoint man is unique. We are the only ones who can speak or create. We are much different from the animals. We dominate the animals.

what?? this is silly. you know that every animal can speak. only because its not your language and/or you dont understand it, they cant speak?? come on, be realistic. humans arent that great compared to other animals. they may think they understand more than a fly about the fly, but they dont understand half of it about themselfes. thats not pretty taff, isnt it?

try again...

Posted By: jcl

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/31/06 09:27

Besides, man is not unique. Homo neanderthaliensis who became extinct 30,000 years ago was also able to use tools and speak.

Posted By: NITRO777

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/31/06 11:55

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what?? this is silly. you know that every animal can speak. only because its not your language and/or you dont understand it, they cant speak?? come on, be realistic.

Speech is very different from communication. Animals cant speak but they cetainly can communicate. The next time you dog says "Dude your getting a Dell" please let me know.

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humans arent that great compared to other animals. they may think they understand more than a fly about the fly, but they dont understand half of it about themselfes. thats not pretty taff, isnt it?

You wont find me exalting the knowledge of humans but we clearly dominate the animals.

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Besides, man is not unique. Homo neanderthaliensis who became extinct 30,000 years ago was also able to use tools and speak.

Somebody help me understand the relevance of this? The uniqueness of man is a philosophical argument for the existence of God and the untruth of evolution. It is not a scientific argument. I can certainly argue for the uniqueness of man but it doesnt seem to fit in the kind of scientific argument we are making here.

I find the emphasis on the uniqueness of man here interesting as to me it really doesnt have much do with evolution at all. Is this what you think drives creationist? That we are afraid of being just animals?

Posted By: ello

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/31/06 12:15

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Speech is very different from communication. Animals cant speak but they cetainly can communicate.

it is speech. its kind of arrogant to tell that it is not

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You wont find me exalting the knowledge of humans but we clearly dominate the animals.

not even a glimpse. this is simply an illusion

Posted By: Matt_Aufderheide

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/31/06 14:50

Irish farmer, you are wrong about how evolutoin works.

Here is why Blatt is right:

Evolution is a word we use to describe observable phenomenon. Evolution doesnt have any intentions., there is no goald to evolution. Evolution is a passive process. The changes happen because of genetic mutation.

Mutation occurs, in small ways, in every new animal produced, from bacteria to gilla monsters, to poeple. Usually these mutations are useless, or detrimental, like being born with a defective heart. Sometimes however, the change is beneficial, like say a coconut crab having a slightly better ability to breath air than it's parents. It will surveiv and reproduce, where perhaps some it's siblings wont be so lucky (this is just an example). SO it's new trait is passed on to its offspring, and so on.

The changes themselves are accidental, random, and unguided. It is only after thousands of generations do the changes become so great as to render the animals a new species, unable to mate with the older species they arose from. This is why a seemingly "new" form can appear. IN fac tthe form isnt new, it is just the l;atest stage in an evolutionary chain.

However, certain forms are indeed far more succesful than others, and once that form is reached, then evolution can slow down immensely..and the animal appear to have reached its apex state. Consider the crocodilians. Crocodile, aligators, are more or less unchanged for millions of years. This i because no more major adaptation was needed, and mutatiosn didnt favor any particular direction. So the animals have stayed more or less how they are since the time of the dinosaurs(who have long since changed, into birdies).

Speaking of dinosaurs changing into birds, here is another fascinating story. If you look at early birds and late therapod dinosaurs, there is very little skeletal difference, and only exp[erts can tell them apart. In fact there is no clear line between them, and there seems to be a perfect gradation, leading most taxonomists to place them in the same crown clade (i think this is right, correct me if not).

Dinos didn't just one day grow wings and fly off. In fact, many early bird/dinos had feathers but probably didnt fly. In fact flying may have been a secondary adaptation after the winged arms were fairly developed. The feathers may have orginaly served some other purpose; it has been speculated that they developed in response to the animals becoming warm-blooded (endo-thermic), and need for insulation (like fur in mammals).

The wing itself is no more than an elongated arm with minimized fingers(phalanges). This is the beauty of the evolutionary process, organs that have one function need only some small changes to have another completely different function.

Now look at the snakes for a moment. Modern snbakes have no visible limbs at all. Yet we know they evolved fomr lizard-like animals that had four limbs. We know this in part becasue we can find vestigial traces of limbs in the skeleton. Look a sake skeleton. Snake fossils have been found with more devloped limbs ( http://www.smu.edu/newsinfo/releases/99256.html)

Why would snakes have limbs, or vestigial limbs? Becasue they once had 4 legs like lizards, and eventually lost them because their evolving body-type and life-behavior didnt need them. But the traces of thier past can be seen i their anatomy tday.

Just like the Coconut crab i mentioned earlier, which was misunderstood. The vestigial gills in coconut crabs today do indicate that the creature once lived in water, but yet an adult coconut crab will INDEED DROWN if immersed in water. Stragnge, because a human fetus can surved immersed in amniotic fluids. Obviously, animals have different attributres in thier life-cycles.

I can go on and on about evolution, biology and so on. But the fact is you dont want to to hear this, because you emotionally dont the implications of like evolution. You obviously dont understand the science behind it.

Posted By: Grimber

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/31/06 16:04

Creationists fear evolution. Because creationists center upon one important aspect. Man is divine, above all other things in creation. hence you see such notions as animals unitelligant, no souls, cannot communicate. Man is superior to all but his creator. "his is to have dominion over all life on earth" as I believe the bible says ( or at least how some people read it as such).

Now, to say man and ape evoloved from common ansestory? hehe your now telling creationists that they arn't any more important to god then any other monkey. That they don't have divine provodence over everything else. they arn't richous, holy, have god's ultimate divine providence. 'Divine Manifest Destiny'
It's not they won't accpet being related to apes, its they don;t want to think they arn't any better than apes ( or any other living thing for that matter).

SO its also not benieth them to manipulate thier own religion to put themselves on a divine pedistal.

What drives creationists? The assention, Rapture what ever you want to call it. the end of time, when ALL human souls at the end of time rise to sit with the father in heaven. This of course will neer happen in christianity untill 'ALL of mankind follow the true faith'.

I find that last bit very intresting. You see it so often in
religions today 'follow the true faith'

How do you FOLLOW a faith? you can't you either belive or not. what it realy states is 'follow the true religion'. thus going back to my privous statment. creationists belief is in what they are told. because religion is taught. Faith cannot be taught. you belive or you don't.

evolotion ( and science) is resisted by creationists because scince tells us we don't know everything. That all things are not plainly layed out before us and thier is nothing more to know. Something yet again creationsists have absoultuly fought against thoughout history.

Did you know the catholic church yet even today has never offialy accpeted that the earth and the planets orbit the sun? SO how do you expect them to accept evolution?

They won't even fix miss translations and spelling mistakes made centures ago so as to not to upset the now accepted doctrines of the church and its 'holy book'

It's one thing to bash sciences when lack understanding of them, but its down right rediculous they know so little about thier own religion but try to use it as proof positive in arguments

Posted By: Blattsalat

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/31/06 22:12

-->.. Evolution affect genetics..

WRONG! and thats the big mistake when people talk about evolution

you said that you can oserver the sunrise every day. does the sunrise affect the fission in the sun because of that?!
No, but the fission is an important part for the sun to be a sun.
Thats how evolution and genetics are connected.
genetic mutation as stated above a couple of time (also from others) is a copy error process and with a ton of additional other impacts all of this ends up in evoluion.

evolution is no force. nor does it act, interact or manage anything. Its the big mathematical/biological aftermath if you want to say so.

if you doubt that lizzards can get wings, then you have to doubt the rules of genetics and not evoulution!

then i would say pictures like this should make you wonder:

If a bunch of ape like creatures are able to manage this, what makes you think that the huge power of something like mother nature cant to the same without the boundries of knowledge or time.

Posted By: Anonymous

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/31/06 22:15

" You see it so often in
religions today 'follow the true faith"

Yeah, it sounds like the faith of "evolution"

It takes a lot of faith to belive in that theory. lol

Posted By: ventilator

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/31/06 22:18

i think the ear on the mouse doesn't have much to do with genetics though. they formed the ear out of some bioplastic material, implanted it and then the mouse cells grew around it and dissolved the artifical material. i somehow found the genetically engineered fluorescent green mice cooler.

Posted By: Marco_Grubert

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/31/06 22:29

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Creationists fear evolution. Because creationists center upon one important aspect. Man is divine, above all other things in creation.

That was my initial impression as well, creationists being afraid of Freud's 3 insults to mankind. But at least those posting on the GameStudio forum seem to be more concerned with evolution preventing their sect's literal reading of the bible than with it "degrading" humans.

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evolotion ( and science) is resisted by creationists because scince tells us we don't know everything. That all things are not plainly layed out before us and thier is nothing more to know. Something yet again creationsists have absoultuly fought against thoughout history.

I think you are wrong here. "God works in miraculous ways" is a standard response, so admitting lack of understanding is not the issue. Though of course people prefer simple & wrong answers to complex & true ones.

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Did you know the catholic church yet even today has never offialy accpeted that the earth and the planets orbit the sun? SO how do you expect them to accept evolution?

Hmm.. I think in "Brief History of Time" Hawking mentions that the RCC accepted earth orbiting the sun "recently", I would have to look it up though.

Posted By: ICEman

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/31/06 22:41

@ Blat

What makes you think it (God) isnt bound by knowledge or time?.. It could be that it is in fact bound..perhaps less so than us because it lived longer and posseses more knowledge.

That picture is a perversion of genetics whereas evolution is driven by progressive and gradual genetic response the environmental changes, particularly when changes are severe in nature, requiring adaptation to thrive.

Having said that, what couldve required a fish to change into a lizard into an ape into a man in only a short billion or so years? Physical adaptations, such as gills, extra limbs, changes in dermal texture... those things are gradual responses.. but very few things, with the possible acception of modern birds even tho their change wasnt so drastic, would call for a shift of phylums.. that is category of animal from marine to reptilian to mamalian to complex mammalian.

Posted By: Irish_Farmer

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 03/31/06 23:09

Quote:

Evolution is a word we use to describe observable phenomenon.

Depends on which kind of evolution you're talking about. Macro or micro. They both represent two different ideas. Also, some of the people on the creationist side of the argument are getting things mixed up here, but I'll clear that up in a minute.

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like say a coconut crab having a slightly better ability to breath air than it's parents.

That's a great example, but one that we don't observe in nature. All of the other examples that you brought up are simply genetics becoming faulty. Which as far as mutations go doesn't do much good to the species. The one example you came up with that was positive has never been observed in nature. You can't just pull stuff out of your butt and use it as proof. Have scientists seen these crabs gain the ability to breath better? And more importantly, does that really matter? Because you would still have a long way to go in showing that crabs can gain lungs when they never had them (regardless of the amount of time). Imagine these crabs living in water their whole lives. If they're slowly transitioning into lungs, then where are they breathing in the meantime? Because at the same time, the complex behaviors for how to live on land would have to accidentally mutate alongside these lungs (which is still a simplified version of how something like this would take place). Assuming this is even possible in the first place, we're talking about horrible odds for the crab, and you would have us believe that this happens all the time...everywhere in nature.

I think you forget its not just the lungs that need to evolve, its the ability to use them correctly, as well as the behavior to transition the animal onto land. I might like those odds if it only had to happen once or twice in the history of life, but thousands and thousands of times?

And that's all without having to tackle the problem of a lack of ADDED genes. I know why you're getting confused, because genes and DNA are constantly in transition in nature. But that doesn't change the fact that you can't have beneficial mutations. Albeit, there are detrimental mutations that actually end up being beneficial. The problem with those are that they still require a gene to become faulty or a gene to become corrupt. Both of which still won't allow for the addition of new features to existing animals. Faulty genes don't produce wings, they simply remove the wings.

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unable to mate with the older species they arose from. This is why a seemingly "new" form can appear.

I agree. These new forms can appear which render the animal incapable of reproducing with its 'ancestor.' However, you still haven't shown this not to be devolution. If a species is just a group that can reproduce, so what? The loss of genetic data prevents seemingly similar animals from reproducing with each other all the time in nature, thus creating a new 'species', but again we're only dealing with loss. Evolution requires 'uphill' evolution in order to explain how a bacteria can become a fish. A new species being created lacks an explanation for how that becomes possible.

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However, certain forms are indeed far more succesful than others, and once that form is reached, then evolution can slow down immensely..and the animal appear to have reached its apex state. Consider the crocodilians. Crocodile, aligators, are more or less unchanged for millions of years. This i because no more major adaptation was needed, and mutatiosn didnt favor any particular direction. So the animals have stayed more or less how they are since the time of the dinosaurs(who have long since changed, into birdies).

Or maybe they were just created with the ability to live successfully in their environment. We can sit here and talk about both of our opinions all day long, but lets stick to concrete proof for a while.

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Dinos didn't just one day grow wings and fly off.

Quit patronizing me. I may not believe evolution, but I know how it works.

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In fact flying may have been a secondary adaptation after the winged arms were fairly developed. The feathers may have orginaly served some other purpose; it has been speculated that they developed in response to the animals becoming warm-blooded (endo-thermic), and need for insulation (like fur in mammals).

You keep speculating, or repeating other peoples' speculations, but it serves no purpose here.

This entire statement becomes null when I ask, "How did this happen?" I know your answer, evolution, but we need to get straight to the root of the problem and explore whether or not evolution is possible. Once we get that ironed out, then we can deal with the fine print.

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The wing itself is no more than an elongated arm with minimized fingers(phalanges).

That shows exactly how little you know. Its MUCH more complex than that. If the wing were just a remix of a hand, birds would be unable to fly because they would be too heavy. Also, you're still not speaking of proof, you're just speculating.

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Look a sake skeleton. Snake fossils have been found with more devloped limbs

How does that prove that these limbs are vestigial? We're dealing with a trace of history. I'm not going to get into how scientists in the past have made MONUMENTAL mistakes when evaluating fossils. That's important to know that in hundreds of documented cases, scientists have been wrong about fossils time and again, either mistaking other animals within the stomach of an animal as part of the animal, or mistaking a pig for an early human being.

However, these legs prove nothing. My hypothesis is that the snake used them to swim. We simply can't infer enough from the skeleton to know everything about the animal.

However, I'm going to save the rest of my argument against vestigial limbs for a moment here.

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Why would snakes have limbs, or vestigial limbs? Becasue they once had 4 legs like lizards, and eventually lost them because their evolving body-type and life-behavior didnt need them. But the traces of thier past can be seen i their anatomy tday.

Before I tell you why these limbs aren't actually vestigial I want to point out the problem with vestigial limbs.

In principle, its not possible to prove that an organ is useless, because there is always the possiblity that a use will be discovered in the future. This has happened hundeds of times. Remember the tailbone? Turns out it is actually integral to keeping the shape of our skeletal structure. In females, the tailbone actually assists in birth. The appendix? Turns out it helps the immune system. Yet for the longest time scientists claimed this proved we evolved from something else that used these things.

But, that argument aside, snakes have been known to use those mini-limbs during reproduction. They act as claspers. So if they're not just sitting there, unused, then how can they possibly be vestigial?

There's still another problem with vestigial organs. They don't prove what evolutionists like you need to have undeniable proof of: positive mutations.

Let's say that these vestigial organs actually existed (which I've just shown they do not and will continue to show you if you want to keep bringing up examples), if they exist they just prove devolution. Or the loss of data once again. If a snake loses its legs, is it gaining something new? No. You're inferring that just because they have these useless legs (which actually have a use) that means they came from something else. The proof simply isn't there.

Its well within the realm of creationism to have seemingly useless organs. Its just the natural process of the loss of genetic data. However, the only observable changes must still occur within the genetic range of that creature. If on the other hand we could see that snakes were growing legs, that would be a whole other story because that's what evolution would require.

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The vestigial gills in coconut crabs today do indicate that the creature once lived in water

You didn't even read my response at all, did you? The gills are not useless. The crabs breath in the water while still developing, and then transition over to the land. Its only once on the land that they lose the ability to breath underwater. Thus, the gills have a purpose.

I admit, ADULT crabs will drown if they stay underwater. But their young are required to spend AN ENTIRE MONTH in the ocean. They use the gills to breath, much like tadpoles use gills to breath before they become a frog. You're just getting confused because unlike frogs, the crabs don't lose the gills when they grow old. Doesn't make anything vestigial.

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Stragnge, because a human fetus can surved immersed in amniotic fluids.

If you're implying that we can breath underwater at some point, then you have a lot of catching up to do with the scientific world. We don't need to breath while in the womb because our mother's blood is being pumped through the umbilical chord. What does blood contain? Oxygen.

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It's one thing to bash sciences when lack understanding of them

I never once bashed science. I love science. I'm bashing your faith in something that can't be proven (something unscientific). The fact that you're not willing to deal with real concrete proof is your own problem. Evolution isn't science, because science deals with what can be 'proved.' With the exception of theoretical sciences, but those are called theoretical for a reason. You're treating evolution as if it has abundant proof. Something that completely lacks proof, and exists only as a 'likely' idea in the minds of scientists isn't my idea of a sound theory. But I'll let my proof speak for me. Let's just let this keep playing out.

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I can go on and on about evolution, biology and so on. But the fact is you dont want to to hear this, because you emotionally dont the implications of like evolution. You obviously dont understand the science behind it.

Have you read my mind? Do you somehow know what I'm afraid of? Maybe you're afraid that you might actually have to be accountable for your own actions. These types of arguments are useless. If you're right, then stick to the proof.

Furthermore, don't question my scientific understanding. I'm not the one who said wings are basically hands (a statement that would have scientists spinning in their graves). I've stuck to the science of evolution this entire time. You have no real answer to my points except supposed proof, which I have no problem refuting time and again, or you just provide your own opinions. Just because you 'think' evolution happened doesn't mean it did. Half of your post consisted of what you thought had happened. Just provide the examples, they'll speak for themselves.

The problem is that you can't provide the examples, and when you do there's always a scientific answer that refutes them. So keep them coming. The truth can keep showing you why you're wrong for as long as you insist on being wrong.

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but its down right rediculous they know so little about thier own religion but try to use it as proof positive in arguments

Resorting to bashing christianity is counterproductive here.

In fact, you've had absolutely nothing useful to add to this discussion, Grimber. You have no proof to back up your belief, you just keep attacking christianity as if that somehow confirms that you're right. Start your own thread to bash religion if that's all you feel like doing.

----------------------------------------

Several people have posted by this time, so I'll have to respond now.

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No, but the fission is an important part for the sun to be a sun.

Yup. And we actually have proof of fission. We don't of evolution. Let's not get sidetracked here. Let's just keep focused on whether or not evolution is possible.

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if you doubt that lizzards can get wings, then you have to doubt the rules of genetics and not evoulution!

I don't doubt that you can force a reprogram of a lizard to gain wings. I do doubt that it can happen naturally however, because we simply have no proof of it happening naturally. We have lizards with wings, no doubt, but you're the one who isn't willing to accept the possibility that it was created that way. If that were an intermediate animal, then the wings would have to be useless. Which I highly doubt they are. A fish with wings would still have the wings for a reason. The wings don't just sit there for the fun of it.

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If a bunch of ape like creatures are able to manage this,

That's exactly the problem. The only way stuff like this can happen is if we FORCE it to happen. You'll never see a human ear grow on a mouse without intervention. Us tampering with genetics is proof only of what an aggressive force can have on genetics, not what a passive force (like nature) can have.

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what makes you think that the huge power of something like mother nature

You've managed to replace God with your own god: nature. If nature is so passive, then how does it have any power? This is what I mean when I say materialism is a religion. If nature isn't god-like, then it has no power, and it is passive as has been said. That's besides the point, however.

Anyway, I'll just wait for the next string of responses.

Posted By: Marco_Grubert

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 04/01/06 00:25

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Depends on which kind of evolution you're talking about. Macro or micro. They both represent two different ideas.

Only to creationists. To biologists they are the same process with the distinction that macro evolution describes a change from one species to another, whereas micro evolution occurs intra-species. However, the process, mutation and natural selection, is the same.

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And that's all without having to tackle the problem of a lack of ADDED genes. I know why you're getting confused, because genes and DNA are constantly in transition in nature.

Speaking of confusion: genes are just a certain arrangement of bases. Rearrange the bases and you either get more or less genetic information (depending on whether you end up with junk DNA or something that can be expressed).

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But that doesn't change the fact that you can't have beneficial mutations.

And what do you think prevents beneficial mutations ? There is no filter that allows harmful mutations but prevents beneficial ones. Just like there is no filter that allows intra-species changes but prevents inter-species ones.

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Both of which still won't allow for the addition of new features to existing animals. Faulty genes don't produce wings, they simply remove the wings.

It seems that you automatically equate mutation with faulty. It just means change. If the change is harmful to the organism it won't be inherited, if it's neutral or beneficial it's got a chance to be inherited.

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Evolution requires 'uphill' evolution in order to explain how a bacteria can become a fish. A new species being created lacks an explanation for how that becomes possible.

A new species being created (i.e. macro evolution) is just a side-effect; albeit one that happens quite frequently.

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This entire statement becomes null when I ask, "How did this happen?" I know your answer, evolution, but we need to get straight to the root of the problem and explore whether or not evolution is possible. Once we get that ironed out, then we can deal with the fine print.

The answer to this is quite obviously "yes it is possible, as evolution occurs in nature and laboratories all the time". However, you seem to have a very specific form of evolution in mind: "adding new visible intra-species features to mammals". For general evolution bacterial resistance and drosophila speciation provide examples that can easily be reproduced.

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I'm not going to get into how scientists in the past have made MONUMENTAL mistakes when evaluating fossils. That's important to know that in hundreds of documented cases, scientists have been wrong about fossils time and again

..and who discovered these mistakes? Right, scientists. And you are claiming that even though specific instances of mistakes or outright fraud have been identified these same scientists are unable to notice that their entire field is wishful thinking ??

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Evolution isn't science, because science deals with what can be 'proved.' With the exception of theoretical sciences, but those are called theoretical for a reason.

Actually it's the other way around, only theoretical sciences have proofs, empirical science has evidence and can't have proof.

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We have lizards with wings, no doubt, but you're the one who isn't willing to accept the possibility that it was created that way.

..and your evidence for creation out of nothing is ?

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If that were an intermediate animal, then the wings would have to be useless.

Who says they have to be useless ? All that is required is for them to not be harmful and to not prevent birth so that their plan remains in the genepool. If they are beneficial to the organism, so much the better since then its chances of having more offspring with the same changes improves.

Posted By: Matt_Aufderheide

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 04/01/06 00:29

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Furthermore, don't question my scientific understanding. I'm not the one who said wings are basically hands

Of course wings are arms/hands. They are the same structure, modified for a different purpose. I think I have to question your scientific understanding, when you dont understand basic anatomy. It's funny that you say you understand science and yet deny evolution. You cant deny evolution and still accept any modern biological science, because Darwin is the foundation of modern biology.

Therapod dinosaurs had arms with hands of a type. These arms became elongated and changed until they were more suited for flying than grasping, but archeaopterix could still probably grasp with its wings/hands. There are even today bird species with vestigial claws.
(http://www.buschgardens.org/infobooks/Raptors/birdphysical.html)

The existence of vestigiality is not open for debate. You must accept this. Vestigiality is only explained by evolution.

Back to the coconut crab problem: the crab has rudimentary gills that function when it is still devloping and then the function is lost. The gills once had full function--the crab's lifecycle indicates it.

The vestigial limbs in snakes are also clear: they are remnants of the snakes' lizard stage. Snakes and lizards diverged at one point, the snake lost the limbs becasue they adopted new behaviors. The link I showed you were fossil snakes that still had limbs prottruding, but modern snakes have very vestifgial limbs in the skeleton. This shows that the expression of the limbs have lessened with time. This can only be explained by evolution.

There are many more examples, but it all revolves around one thing: only one theory can explain thse anatomical realities--evolution.

Posted By: Marco_Grubert

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 04/01/06 00:34

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The existence of vestigiality is not open for debate. You must accept this. Vestigiality is only explained by evolution.

I don't want to put words in Irish_Farmer's mouth, but I think he understands that. His claim seems to be, that additions to an organism's anatomy require a miracle, whereas loss of features is explained by genetics/evolution.

Posted By: Blattsalat

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 04/01/06 00:41

-->..What makes you think it (God) isnt bound by knowledge or time?

the term "almighty" doesnt leave room or space for anything to be bound to.

-->.. Macro or micro evolution
This in the same time are theories of creationists and not part of the "classic" theory of evolution. The funny thing is that people try to disproove one theory of evolution with creating another one.

-->..Evolution requires 'uphill' evolution in order to explain how a bacteria can become a fish..

wrong. evolution is not some kind of "pimp my genetic code". its a random change.

-->.. If a snake loses its legs, is it gaining something new? No...

again. evolution is no exchange or upgrade procedure. you dont want to understand that. You dont lose anything and gain anything else in exchange. Its nor a roleplay game.

-->..And we actually have proof of fission...

really, where exactly do you have the proof of it? Its a theory as any other.

-->..I don't doubt that you can force a reprogram of a lizard to gain wings.

thats again not the point. its not about forcing something to grow or go away. Thing that happen are genetic mutations.
Things that shift from the genetic norm and occure often enough get a chance to undergo the process of evolution and form other genetic constelations and so forth.

-->..If that were an intermediate animal, then the wings would have to be useless..

there are several bodyparts and organs in the human body not used anymore. Same goes for animals.

-->..The only way stuff like this can happen is if we FORCE it to happen.

as far as i can remeber nobody forced us to lose the functionality of our appendix.

also please explain me this:

What does he do with his arms?

-->..You've managed to replace God with your own god: nature...

thats what you are saying and its not the truth. first of all i have never mentioned that god doesnt exist. and furthermore havent i stated that i think the nature has replaced god.
The only thing i say is that there are natural rules, powers and processes that support the theory of evolution. While i havent seen one that supports the idea that a god like creature has formed us 8000 years ago (i see lots of reasons to doubt it but none to believe it)

as science also religion has to allow questions and theories or it gets not believable anymore. Thats my oppinion. And while guys 3000 years back thought vulcanos are god made i think we are allowed to "update" this view of the world.

Posted By: ICEman

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 04/01/06 01:18

Who or what, besides our books, says our creator is almight..or a God at all? Obviously if it exists, its capable of great power, but what besides us says that it has to be this..wizard,, immortal, omnieverything, magician?

I think part of the reason God is such a mystery is because we dont explore all possibilites of what he could be, so we'd never know what to look for.

Posted By: Irish_Farmer

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 04/01/06 02:24

Nicely put, Marco. I'm glad someone with some actual understanding of science has entered the debate. This should be interesting.

Let me first start by appending my thesis. I really shouldn't say I'm setting out to disprove evolution. That's beyond pointless. However, what I won't do is stop until any other evolutionist who wants to pursue the debate will admit that evolution must be accepted by faith, not proof, and that the current 'proof' of evolution is based on assumptions.

That said, I will respectfully request some time to study up. I have responses, but you're raising the level of the discussion up to something I can't put into words based on my current knowledge.

Also, I know I misrepresented my understanding of Genes. However, it was more of a misrepresentation of an idea. I know what genes are, I've talked to scientists and studies DNA and Genes and protein and all of that (from secular sources). I misrepresented the idea was trying to convey.

That said, I know why I'm right, but I don't have the specific evidence to back it up. And I know it isn't fair to just bring ideas into the discussion.

Matt and Blatt, its not even worth responding to you anymore. You insist on bringing up the same points, and we can run around in circles for years and still get no where. I mean, you keep bringing up these vestigial gills. The very same gills that if the crab didn't have them, it would die off in one generation. You may know a thing or two about biology and science, but its nothing without logic.

The only way this discussion is going to go anywhere is if its between Marco and I at this point. I'll be back.

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I don't want to put words in Irish_Farmer's mouth, but I think he understands that. His claim seems to be, that additions to an organism's anatomy require a miracle, whereas loss of features is explained by genetics/evolution.

To an extent. But my main claim is that vestigial organs cannot exist if those same organs have a purpose. So far every example of a vestigial organ has turned out to actually have a purpose, thus making it very un-vestigial.

I mean...one of you brought up the appendix, which scientists now widely recognize as an aid to the immune system. It baffles my mind what's so hard to understand about why that means its not a vestigial organ. Its not even worth talking about it anymore.

Posted By: Marco_Grubert

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 04/01/06 03:31

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To an extent. But my main claim is that vestigial organs cannot exist if those same organs have a purpose. So far every example of a vestigial organ has turned out to actually have a purpose, thus making it very un-vestigial.

I mean...one of you brought up the appendix, which scientists now widely recognize as an aid to the immune system. It baffles my mind what's so hard to understand about why that means its not a vestigial organ. Its not even worth talking about it anymore.

Just a quick note on this: vestigial does not mean "without purpose". According to the Oxford English Dictionary vestigial="degenerate, rudimentary, or atrophied, having lost its function in the course of evolution".

The appendix plays a minor role in the immune system and you can live without it , it's part of the digestive tract but no longer has its original function, thus atrophied is an appropriate description of its status.

What makes vestigial organs interesting in this context is that you can see how they are essential in one organism and how in other organisms you find similar structures yet they only play a minor role or none at all. The similarity is a good clue to common descent, the existence of a suboptimal organ hints at a suboptimal "designer".

Posted By: Neonotso

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 04/01/06 04:13

Wow, a lot has happened since I was away...

Hey, Irish_Farmer, you basically said you only wanted this discussion to be between you and Macro, but may I join in?

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Now look at the snakes for a moment. Modern snbakes have no visible limbs at all. Yet we know they evolved fomr lizard-like animals that had four limbs. We know this in part becasue we can find vestigial traces of limbs in the skeleton.

Good job, you found something is actually also kind of true to creationists and Christians alike (if they'd study their Bible). If you read the Bible, you may notice that Satan was a very good angel, like God's right hand man, so to speak, but then, because of his pride he was kicked out of heaven. He then took the form of a serpant, and deceived the people of the time to eat the fruit that was forbidden to eat (trying not to go into too much details for you evolutionists), and was punished by God in this verse:

"And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed avove all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of they life:" - Genesis 3:14

...I know, I know, I'm not supposed to quote the Bible, according to one of you guys over there; But, it's kind of easier to quote it than to come up with own translation... Anyway, if you evolutionists didn't catch the main point of that verse, it is... "upon thy belly shalt thou go". Apparently, yes, it did have legs, why else would God curse the serpant to go upon it's belly? It wasn't on it's belly before.

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Creationists fear evolution. Because creationists center upon one important aspect. Man is divine, above all other things in creation. hence you see such notions as animals unitelligant, no souls, cannot communicate. Man is superior to all but his creator. "his is to have dominion over all life on earth" as I believe the bible says ( or at least how some people read it as such).

First, we don't fear evolution (or shouldn't). And, again, if you read the Bible, we are not the highest form of creation: the angels are.

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What drives creationists? The assention, Rapture what ever you want to call it. the end of time, when ALL human souls at the end of time rise to sit with the father in heaven. This of course will neer happen in christianity untill 'ALL of mankind follow the true faith'.

First thing is, I think you mean Christians...

Also, unfortunately lots of Christians don't think the Rapture is real, or they think it's after the Great Triblulation (another Biblical event), or think it's just some thing that's happening in the distant future, and that it is of no importance to them... So, I'd say, definitely "no", the Rapture doesn't drive most Christians.

Another thing is, where are you getting this "ALL of mankind follow the true faith' stuff?? Certainly not the Bible... it's nowhere to be found. Maybe a crazy church, but it's not the way things really are. The Rapture WILL happen, and not only that but it will happen soon, even if all the people are not ready for it, the true Christians (as in the ones who don't just call themselves Christians... or the ones who don't just do good works: the ones who have accepted and believe in the fact that God as Jesus, died on the cross for our sins) will go up to Heaven for a time and... well, if you guys want me to go on, you can say so, but I've covered the point I was trying to make and you evolutionists are probably bored reading this...

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evolotion ( and science) is resisted by creationists because scince tells us we don't know everything. That all things are not plainly layed out before us and thier is nothing more to know. Something yet again creationsists have absoultuly fought against thoughout history.

I don't know if I understood this, but do you mean that we as creationists resist science because we think we're supposed to know everything and have it plainly layed out before us? Well, let me tell you, if you think I, or any other creationist thinks they know everything and has it plainly layed out, well... that SHOULDN'T be true, as no one knows everything and has in plainly layed out, but I'll bet some people think they do know everything and think that they do have it plainly layed out. But, I certainly do think (or rather hope) that the majority of creationists don't think they know everything.

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Did you know the catholic church yet even today has never offialy accpeted that the earth and the planets orbit the sun? SO how do you expect them to accept evolution?

They won't even fix miss translations and spelling mistakes made centures ago so as to not to upset the now accepted doctrines of the church and its 'holy book'

Would you please stop relating the Christians and/or creationists to the catholics? Though I'll bet most of them claim to be Christians, a lot (if not all) are not. I'm not sure if I've got this straight, but I think they might actually use a different Bible than us Christians also.

- I hope I've been helpful to someone and I hope I've said everything right.

Posted By: Matt_Aufderheide

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 04/01/06 12:15

Catholics dont use "a different bible,". And they do accept that the Earth moves around the sun.

@ Irish Farmer..Bascialy if you dont accept scientific evolution then you are anti-science, plain and simple.

Posted By: Blattsalat

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 04/01/06 19:16

@iceman: the human definition of god is that he is almighty. I didnt set those rule nor do i agree to it but thats the biblical explenation and one ... the major pillar of the religion. There is no inbetween, either he is god or not.
I would rather suppor the theory that planet earth is some sort of alien wildlife park that was created then to agree to a theory of an old, bearded man sitting in some clouds and creating the world.

If you say that god or religion is a spiritual power then i would agree. But this "power" then wouldnt have direct impact on anything. Its the people that believe in it that make this spiritual power work.
And this is why i agree that you can be a man of science and a religious person at the same time.

neither is religion or believe bad or wrong, i honestly think its a positive thing and something worth having.
The only thing i dont "believe" in is the modern organized religion. Religion isnt ment to explain biology or evolution. Its also not ment to build cars and create toothbrushes.

it doesnt explain how things work but the ideology behind it. Sone though want it to become a guideline for everything and thats not how its ment to work.

and whenever the run out of arguments they stop the discussion. and that happens very often and very fast.

the bottom line is that if someone wants to believe that the earth was created by god he should do so if he likes.
So far i just havent heared one single good and somehow stable argument for this.

but i guess thats also not neccessary at all. In the end its about believing and not knowing

Posted By: Irish_Farmer

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 04/01/06 23:49

You guys are gonna love what I've got cooking up for you. I've been finding out a lot of really interesting things about mutations and genetics. Highly interesting. The only thing holding me up now is that I have to keep branching off to study specific details of things like speciation, types of mutation, and natural 'anti-mutations.'

My response, in full, will be here either tonight or tomorrow.

Posted By: Neonotso

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 04/02/06 00:03

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You guys are gonna love what I've got cooking up for you. I've been finding out a lot of really interesting things about mutations and genetics. Highly interesting. The only thing holding me up now is that I have to keep branching off to study specific details of things like speciation, types of mutation, and natural 'anti-mutations.'

My response, in full, will be here either tonight or tomorrow.

Ok, cool. Sounds like it should be interesting. I guess that's why you haven't posted much today, right?

Posted By: Marco_Grubert

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 04/03/06 20:22

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Would you please stop relating the Christians and/or creationists to the catholics? Though I'll bet most of them claim to be Christians, a lot (if not all) are not. I'm not sure if I've got this straight, but I think they might actually use a different Bible than us Christians also.

While American born-agains might not consider Catholics to be Christians in the rest of the world they are regarded as such.
The Catholic bible has some extra documents. E.g. you can get a Protestant and a Catholic version of the RSV.

Posted By: Marco_Grubert

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 04/04/06 00:27

@Irish_Farmer:
You posted a rather long text in the other thread responding to some of my statements. I do not have the time nor desire to answer all the points you raise there. Just pick one or two issues that you think are particularly relevant and then we can go over those in detail.

Posted By: eternalyouth

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 04/04/06 03:54

Here is why, one can doubt God's existence. Because there is no proof or evidence, why believe? What I mean is... sure, there may not be eternal evidence of Santa Claus's existence, nor the easter bunny. But perhaps it is true.

The bible was written at a time prior to the printing press... I don't know 1843... whenever it was written. For someone to hand-copy all of those... it is so incredibly easy for anyone to misquote or state anything they feel necessary. Previously, people aged (thougn no one ages anymore.) How do you know that God didn't "age" and die? Quite possibly God may not have "unlimited power." Quite possibly, there are way too many people in this world for him to hear all prayers at once...
=================================
The truth is, I am sure many people pray all the time. Take the 9/11 tragedies. Quite possibly everyone on that airplane prayed repeatedly, yet everyone in the building, and towers died. Not a single person in that area even survived. Which brings my point. To me "doubting" God's existence is much like "doubting" the existence of any other folk tail, or fairy tale. However, the bible religion does seem to infer that if you choose to believe or "worship" any thing else, you are going to hell... or something like that... ask any christian and he'd tell you that. "I worship/believe this." "You are going to hell, and will get molested by Michaeal Jackson."

I guess the truth is, no one can "prove" that God doesn't exist. Though we cannot prove that he "does" exactly. Since anything spritiual like that scares/gives me nightmares. I am glad it is like this. I doubt praying actually works, though I probably do not have evidence. I also have no evidence that worshipping the "good-luck" fairy doesn't work either. For that reason, I see no point in praying or going to church. Most people have those religions... because their family or culture do so. There is also scientology. Though I cannot prove that Lord Xenu's thetans are in my body, I highly doubt paying over $300,000 in an exorcism would do any good... but still no evidence.

I personally, think religionw only slows one down. While one person could starve themselves for a month, get anally molested, or pay $300,000 to a church of scientology, I think it only wastes time for what could be spent really important... like watching T.V which is much more entertaining. I also see no reason to think you'd be rewarded for all of that time spent sacrificing animals, just for your belief. If I were a god, for how much I know... everyone could be worshipping the wrong person. Perhaps it is "Dog" who I should be worshipping. That "dog" wants me to make love to Marco Grubert's hot sister... in that case... because there is no evidence... everyone would be rewarded the same. It'd be all go down to if you are good, bad, or ***.

Someone has in their signature "if you do not believe in God, then look at the son. He makes blind in only those who sees believing." What about fairies, and gods? Or thetans in scientology? Do they all make me blind because I cannot see them... for how much I know... there are gods... or fairies... they can control how "good" or "bad" your luck is. They were "good" enough to make me the first person to learn that this generation of people is here to stay. Because I was the first to experience eternal youth. The world was created by fairly odd parents. They have no parents... how can that be? Divide 2 by three and you get an unlimited .66666666. That "infinite" number represents how there was NOTHING before them.

Posted By: Irish_Farmer

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 04/04/06 05:07

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@Irish_Farmer:
You posted a rather long text in the other thread responding to some of my statements. I do not have the time nor desire to answer all the points you raise there. Just pick one or two issues that you think are particularly relevant and then we can go over those in detail.

This brings into question your entire system of beliefs, don't you owe it to yourself to explore it further? I've already spent days researching it, so all you have to do is browse through the compiled evidence. I can split the document, but if I try to summarize it it will lose meaning.

That said, if its too much to read (I understand, it really is painfully long (over 12 pages in microsoft word at 12 point font)) I can do my best to try and reform it into a discussion; point by point.

Posted By: Scramasax

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 04/04/06 19:03

I've honestly had to speed read all the posts since my last visit. That teaches me to get a week of work in.

I've heard allot about faith, and its true, you have to have faith to think evolution is true. All things start with the faith that you exist. After that you have to pony up, and believe that other people exist, and finally that we all are bound by some type of general reality.

Scientific method is a way to derive what it true. (General reality) Its wrong allot, and this is where the creationalist seem to collect. This part is what science is all about. Build a model that will predict what will or has happened. If the model starts to fail, then cook up a new one. The re-due is almost the most important part. Empirical evidence supersedes anyone's model that doesn't match objective reality. If this fails to happen then we are no better than the creationalists who already predetermine what is true because its written in a book.

I've read allot about how scientific method is flawed, and I simply ask. What method do you prescribe to replace it?

Posted By: Marco_Grubert

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 04/04/06 19:38

Quote:

This brings into question your entire system of beliefs, don't you owe it to yourself to explore it further? I've already spent days researching it, so all you have to do is browse through the compiled evidence.

The browsing part is simple, almost as simple as making things up or pasting them from a website. Researching the claims and debating or debunking them is what takes time.

Do I "owe it to myself" to explore this further? Dunno, do I owe it to myself to explore the views of every flat-earther, alien abductee, or reincarnated new-ager? No, I don't think so. I am interested in learning new things but if the odds are stacked against a conspiracy theory (involving thousands of people smarter than myself no less) then I am only willing to put so much effort into it, since the likelihood of it being true is small.

Posted By: Irish_Farmer

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 04/06/06 06:41

Quote:

Do I "owe it to myself" to explore this further? Dunno, do I owe it to myself to explore the views of every flat-earther, alien abductee, or reincarnated new-ager? No, I don't think so. I am interested in learning new things but if the odds are stacked against a conspiracy theory (involving thousands of people smarter than myself no less) then I am only willing to put so much effort into it, since the likelihood of it being true is small.

Eh...complacency. I guess I'm not old enough to experience this unfortunate trait. Maybe when the life has been drained out by a dreary day-in-day-out existence. This probably doesn't describe you (I mean the dreary day in day out thing probably doesn't describe you), but for me, the search for truth doesn't just end in what I'm told is true by other people.

The only other substantial claim to the throne of truth is still science, its just creationism. There really is no fundemental difference, except they don't believe that proof of creatures becoming other creatures has to exist just because otherwise scientists have been wrong all along.

But, you obviously don't see it that way. Its obvious that the nut jobs out there, and media enforced expectations have made you completely untrusting of anything having to do with God. I'm sorry to hear that. But, consider this. An amateur like me has managed to provide ample evidence against your theory that can be proved in one simple concise idea: The evidence you have doesn't point to a change between kinds of animals. It just points to a change Within kinds of animals. Anything else is just conjecture, but this is what materialist evolution is based on. Wishful thinking.

You have it your way. The way I see it, your side is the one wearing the foil hats.

Let me just make one simple claim. This won't end it once and for all, but just give me one example of a mutation that improves existing genetics. It only takes one mutation that causes something new to appear in the morphology, etc that wasn't originally within the genetic range (ie if a single celled organism adapts to living in the dark, other members of the exact same species cannot have this same data, and furthermore the creature shouldn't be able to survive in the dark to begin with) as an example. Furthermore, if this new data is created, it cannot kill the creature or reduce fitness, which I think is fair since this is precisely what your theory is based on. We can iron out the details later.

I say this won't end it, because there's a chance you'll refer to one of those improvements like the one in my long post that work within the original genetics (the animal was already able to survive in dark, and scientists proved it could be change to....survive in the dark).

However, at least let's get on the right track. Bible problems and other bunny trails aside, let's get straight to the heart of the problem. If you can produce one truly upward genetic mutation I will concede that materialist evolution is possible, after further research since I've almost been fooled before.

I'm so confident that its a physical impossibility that I will wager all of my beliefs on it. Why not after all when mutations have so many problems to contend with, like natural defense mechanisms, lack of effective range, and the fact that they are random changes to an ordered system.

I used to believe in the same kind of evolution that you do. Not that long ago actually. I just assumed what I was told was true for a while because I didn't think it affected me one way or the other. I'm not saying you're this way, but you're not arguing against some blind Christian here. I've seen everything science has to offer.

However, that belief ended when I tried to find evidence of this kind of evolution. I couldn't, not even from scientists themselves.

We should combine this into one of the other threads we were already speaking about, probably, if you want to participate in this.

"It is entirely in line with the accidental nature of mutations that extensive tests have agreed in showing the vast majority of them detrimental to the organism in its job of surviving and reproducing -- good ones are so rare we can consider them all bad." H. J. Mueller, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 11:331

These are scientists speaking. What are you holding on to here? This guy won the precious nobel prize for his work on mutations. He was celebrated by the same people who still believe this 'upwards' evolution is possible. There's nothing left of this materialist evolution except the lies it started. You said these scientists are smarter than you are. And they couldn't find a good mutation. I want you to find one. Its a challenge. Maybe you can outsmart the unbelievers among your crowd.

I've looked recently and so far some guy who believes in God and creation and evolution all at once (talk about confusion) claims he saw yeast become a capped fungi within his lifetime.

Also, someone said that mutations are good because they allow enzymes (he called them workers, so I assumed he meant enzymes) to either be more or less specialized. Changing these workers isn't going to change an entire creature, and its on such a basic level that it doesn't even compare to what it would take to affect genetics on a more general level. That's just my preliminary point against this, since I'm sure further inspection could bring up numerous other problems with this hypothesis. After all, its made by a person desperately clinging to the last possible hope that his twisted version of what evolution is could be true.

Anyway, it seems the evidence (or lack of evidence) hasn't changed, just scientists have been forced to come up with reasons why these mutations haven't been found. In other words, instead of coming up with this evidence, they try and explain away the lack thereof. Like say, with sickle cell anemia. Sure, its good because if you survive sickle cella anemia you're more likely to survive malaria, but we all know these kinds of mutations, as I've said many times don't change creatures into other creatures. If they do, I'd love to know how. Sounds like true junk science to me.

Sickle cell anemia can lead to the following: leg ulcers, abdominal pain, severe anemia (duh), joint pain, and of course defective (as in bad, or worse off) blood cells. On the far end of the spectrum it can lead to death. Let's get a thousand more mutations like these and pile them into our genes and watch the result. You and your 'true science' can keep believing in this evidence. I can't.

I love how you guys keep saying, "Besides, eventually sickle cell anemia will be thinned out of the population where there is no malaria." If its not bad to begin with, why should it have to thinned out of the population?

But we probably should have kept this in another thread, my bad.

Posted By: Scramasax

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 04/06/06 09:04

@Irish_Farmer

This is one link on how bacterial mutation is beneficial for its own self.
http://www.gate.net/~rwms/EvoMutations.html

The flu virus is another example. That's why the government is scared of bird flu. Right now, it's a minor disease, but if it mutates, then it's a danger.

I know there are million links that say different. I went through and read them. Not all of them mind you, but enough to make up my own mind again, since the last time I studied it 10 years ago, in school and on my own.

Higher organisms are tougher to detect, because of the high cycles needed to detect a beneficial mutation. Our life span is a problem, because its short. We can't see six hundred to a thousand generations of any complex creature. Its a shame cause I wouldn't mind living a couple of thousand years to watch the change.

Posted By: Blattsalat

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 04/06/06 16:30

the current h2no virus is allready mutated a couple of hundred times. The thing most scientists are worried about is the cross mutation of the flu and the h2no virus causing a pandemic spread.

but thanks to the creationists things like this cant happen and all of us are on the safe side.
good thing, and some allready wanted to research some antidode for it...what a waste of time.

cheers

Posted By: Irish_Farmer

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 04/06/06 21:37

Scramasax, I don't have the time to do it right now, but I will respond to those examples. Its probably going to take me two hours, but I need to be social at some point this week, plus my ex-girlfriend is offering to buy me dinner and I never refuse a free meal.

However, I found that exact website myself while searching for beneficial mutations. I grabbed a random example and used it as proof of how evolution within kinds happens and is twisted in a way to show evidence of change to and from kinds.

Now I suppose I'll have to go through each and every one. Notice the website never says what kind of evolution is happening here. They simply use the term evolution. But I'll get back on that in a little while.

Unfortunately, that site is somewhat technical, which isn't really a problem for me (only because its not insanely technical). However, it will require me to explain the way things work on a basic level, which will get long winded, because its not a quick explanation like they would have it seem. You don't have to be an expert to know this stuff, but it takes more than passive high school knowledge. So its going to take a while. But how about this. I promise to respond to each and every one of those claims. Although the only really compelling ones are where animals go from single cell to multi cell, or new metabolic pathways are gained. However, I'm going to have to get knee deep in technical fun. So be patient.

There is an explanation, and actually the explanation is rooted in some pretty interesting biological science, about why these conclusions (not the observations themselves) are wrong. You'll get a chance to learn about one of the most interesting organisms (in my opinion) ever. Mostly because it defies the current evolutionary thinking of how to classify animals. But that will require more research (to provide you with accurate information) as well as a more thorough and layman-friendly explanation of exactly what is happening during these 'evolutions.' The rest of the explanations are much easier than that.

Posted By: mpdeveloper_B

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 04/08/06 04:21

all i will say as this thread has strayed away from it's original context, is that these "viewpoints" of evolution and all have not been proven, as someone said earlier on its a THEORY not a LAW there is a major difference. A law would be something like the world being round, this is proven because we can go there, we can go outside the world and watch it rotate. Evolution is just another way that a scientist is trying to use to help explain why we are here and how we got here, because they don't know. Man is always trying to explain his existance, but because he will not sit still and try to learn what he will, instead of forming a narrow-minded observation and turning it into a theory, will not help him find his origin. Most of the real science has left this thread because now its just a dispute over evolution and how to "form" it with christianity, it can't happen, people should not be stupid enough to make a theory part of their every-day belief, of course you will try and say to this that "God is nothing but a theory himself and that a christian is foolish for believing this way", but i say that it's childish to try and throw back at someone what they just threw at you, it's pointless to get hit by the same bat twice, so to speak. This debate has no longer been on a scientific basis, but a theoretic and faithful basis, the only reason you will not accept that God exsits is because your beliefs are attacked if you convert. No one is converting anyone, nor is anyone looking from a open-minded view in this topic. Scientists can prove things with their God-given talents, not because of some degree, a degree is nothing more that a paper saying you got good grades and passed. I cannot believe how either side of this debate can try and disprove what has already been proved from a scientific stand-point and from a christian stand-point. How can you disprove the earth's roundness, or physics, or that there is a moon thousands of miles away from this earth, YOU CAN'T. How can you disprove that there is a stronger power that helps a man keep his wits about him and make his decisions, how can you disprove that this power tells him when he is wrong, and when he is in a fatal accident, he lives, hmm i think i know this, YOU CAN'T. The narrow-minded views in this forum are foolish, and if a person who throws away his life and only lives by his own rules and doesn't agree with what is proven in his everyday life and around him is a fool to God, he is a fool to me. Answers are welcome to this, i am interested in what you say, foolish or not, but if you will attack at me or any other in this forum in the same way that we have attacked you, than you should go change your diapers, lol.

-Manslayer101 - inspired by the almighty

Posted By: mpdeveloper_B

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 04/08/06 04:26

it seems harsh but it is honest, however as i have said before i am not fighting, i am quite calm, if it sounds to anyone that i'm lashing out, i'm sorry

Posted By: AndersA

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 04/08/06 07:57

Quote:

[...]these "viewpoints" of evolution and all have not been proven, as someone said earlier on its a THEORY not a LAW there is a major difference.

What is your definition of a theory and a law? What is your definition of a proof?
There are a lot of famous theories: Maxwell's Equations, The Special and General Relativity, The Standard Model, The theory of Evolution...
Would you say that some of them are more proved than others? Fair enough, but which is the more reliable and which is the less reliable and why is that?

Quote:

A law would be something like the world being round

This is not a law. This is merely an empirical fact. A law has to be more general than that. You have to be able to make general predictions from it, at least.

Quote:

Evolution is just another way that a scientist is trying to use to help explain why we are here and how we got here,

This is not the case. Evolution is an observable phenomena. This is what we see if we observe the nature without prejudice. Because of this it's sound to form a theory based on this phenomena; a theory useful for making predictions.
What's behind this theory, whether it is the Christian God or it is The Famous Turtle, science really don't care about as long as it works better than any other theory.

Quote:

Scientists can prove things with their God-given talents

And this is where you got it all wrong. Scientists can't prove anything, at least not in the name of science. Science isn't about proof!

Posted By: Marco_Grubert

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 04/10/06 23:15

It's too bad that this is not really taught outside of college, but there are a lot of misconceptions about how science works and what terms are being used. Let me clear up a few.

Quote:

is that these "viewpoints" of evolution and all have not been proven, as someone said earlier on its a THEORY not a LAW there is a major difference.

Natural sciences do not "prove" things. Proofs only exist in mathematics and related disciplines. What you do in other fields is you postulate a theory/model/hypothesis. If any physical evidence is found that is contrary to the theory then this theory is said to be "falsified". The obvious step then is to adjust or replace the theory so that the new evidence can be explained as well. With this said, the theory of evolution has not been falsified because all evidence found so far is compatible with it or non-ad-hoc modification have been made to adjust for new evidence (e.g. additions by Mayer, Watson/Crick).

It was customary to call good theories "laws" prior to the 20th century. Nowadays scientists no longer call their theories "laws" because any new evidence could shatter them. Thus you won't find a "law of evolution" or a "law of superconductivity" or a "law of quantum gravity". If you want to make a distinction between a theory that has been around for a long time and a spur-of-the-moment idea the right terms would be "theory" and "hypothesis". Note that it's "theory of evolution" and not "hypothesis of evolution".

Quote:

people should not be stupid enough to make a theory part of their every-day belief, of course you will try and say to this that "God is nothing but a theory himself and that a christian is foolish for believing this way"

I would recommend you make the theory of gravity part of your life or else it might be rather brief. You don't have to make the theory of evolution part of your life since for the most part it won't affect you (though you better hope it's part of your M.D.'s life).
God is not a "theory" since there is no universally accepted definition of god. A god that is as general as possible would not qualify as theory either since it could not be falsified.

Quote:

How can you disprove that there is a stronger power that helps a man keep his wits about him and make his decisions, how can you disprove that this power

This falls under the category of "bait-and-switch". The previous posts were not about god in general but about god creating organisms. The former is a philosophical issue, the later is a scientific one. The hypothesis that god created organisms has been falsified. The hypothesis that there is some kind of god can not be falsified, but as soon as you claim god's involvement (natural effects) you start moving it into the testable (scientific) realm. As an example of the later: researchers tried to see if prayer helps recovering patients. A few weeks ago they announced the results that (blind) prayer does not help- this would be an example of falsifying a claim such as "there is a god which heals people when they are being prayed for".

Posted By: Neonotso

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 04/11/06 12:53

In response to your prayer comment, Marco, I'd like to say that God can't (or doesn't) listen to the prayers of un-believers except for a prayer that you are praying because you want to be saved (like a saving prayer: whatever you call it). If you wanted a real test, you'd have to have real Christians praying, and make sure they're serious about what they're praying for. Praying is basically like "talking" to God. If you lie to God, he's probably not going to answer your prayer. So, if you just say "O Lord, please help ___" but you don't really mean it, there's quite a possiblity He won't help ___.

I was praying for Guardian and his family, just about every day, sincerely. And, Guardian's sister made it through. That's the power of prayer - though to just a small percent. God can do a lot more than that. Even if you say... well, Guardian's sister had good doctors operating on her: Well, who decided those doctors would be there? God!

Posted By: Marco_Grubert

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 04/11/06 19:06

@Neonotso: You are going for the no real scotsman fallacy without knowing anything about the research in the first place. If you hurry you might still be able to find an explanation of what and how they tested at news.google.com.

Quote:

And, Guardian's sister made it through. That's the power of prayer

Another result from the same study: if you are praying for somebody at least DO NOT TELL THEM THAT. Otherwise they might get the impression that they are in a worse state and will be statistically more likely to have complications.

Posted By: Anonymous

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 04/11/06 19:30

nothings wrong with telling them,

only after something good happens

Posted By: Neonotso

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 04/11/06 20:30

Guardian knew I was praying for him and his family...

I have it posted in the "prayers for my sister" topic (or whatever it was called).

Posted By: Irish_Farmer

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 04/13/06 04:45

Quote:

In response to your prayer comment, Marco, I'd like to say that God can't (or doesn't) listen to the prayers of un-believers except for a prayer that you are praying because you want to be saved (like a saving prayer: whatever you call it). If you wanted a real test, you'd have to have real Christians praying, and make sure they're serious about what they're praying for. Praying is basically like "talking" to God. If you lie to God, he's probably not going to answer your prayer. So, if you just say "O Lord, please help ___" but you don't really mean it, there's quite a possiblity He won't help ___.

I was praying for Guardian and his family, just about every day, sincerely. And, Guardian's sister made it through. That's the power of prayer - though to just a small percent. God can do a lot more than that. Even if you say... well, Guardian's sister had good doctors operating on her: Well, who decided those doctors would be there? God!

Number one, its not up to us to determine if its good or bad for someone to be ill, or even die. That's God's domain. Its only by his mercy that we're alive in the first place, so each day is borrowed time. That's not to say its not a bad thing to be ill or die, but its not our place to try and take control over these events. We brought this on ourselves in the first place, though time and again I believe God does step in on our behalf to cause miraculous cures, etc. Anyway...

That's why Jesus said something along these lines:

God already knows the desires that are on your heart, so when you pray, pray like this (at which point he goes on to recite the lord's prayer).

In other words, its not our purpose to petition God to do 'good'. How can we, with our limited scope of understanding, truly know what's good or bad? Think about David Pelzer (the author of a Child Called It). What happened to him was horrible, no one will argue that, but if it hadn't happened, he wouldn't have been able to bring so much attention to the good of foster care, and to bring to the forefront the rather controversial topic of child abuse. Good can come from bad, and we mock God by assuming we know what's best, even if its with prayer.

That doesn't mean that healing doesn't come from God, it simply means it definately does not come from man's desires. I also don't mean to downplay the power of prayer, but our desires do not replace the ultimate will of God. Its actually a really complicated topic that I'm not going to expand on here.

However, claiming God does not listen to atheists is rather absurd. If an atheist is sincerely (not mockingly) talking to God, why should he not listen? In fact, would that not then negate the atheist status of said atheist? An atheist will not sincerely pray to God unless s/he believes that God is listening. In fact, I would go as far as to say that God pays more attention to those prayers than to those who are already saved, seeing as an atheist would be akin to a prodigal son or however you spell it. But I have no specific backing in the scripture so I don't really stand by that last statement.

But to test prayer, you're really saying we need to test God because we have no power except to petition or just plain 'talk.' If God has decided to use the bad for a good purpose, why should he listen to us if we try and intervene? In fact, these little games or tests might seem to be rather 'bad' of us for lack of a better term. Who are we to test God for our own purposes? Didn't satan try to do that in the desert with Jesus?

No offense, I just wanted to voice my opinion. I'm not really an expert either, so take what I'm saying with a grain of salt. I'm just trying to be fair.

Posted By: Irish_Farmer

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 04/13/06 05:36

Okay, I'm going to go through those examples one by one.

Quote:

1.) Adaptation to High and Low Temperatures by E. coli.

A single clone of E. coli was cultured at 37 C (that is 37 degrees Celsius) for 2000 generations. A single clone was then extracted from this population and divided into replicates that were then cultured at either 32 C , 37 C, or 42 C for a total of another 2000 generations. Adaptation of the new lines was periodically measured by competing these selection lines against the ancestor population. By the end of the experiment, the lines cultured at 32 C were shown to be 10% fitter that the ancestor population (at 32 C), and the line cultured at 42 C was shown to be 20% more fit than the ancestor population. The replicate line that was cultured at 37 C showed little improvement over the ancestral line.

Does this prove evolution?

I'll start with the easiest one. The line recultured at 37* was just as fit. This is to be expected, and goes to show nothing. The one cultured at 32* as expected were a bit more fit (or able to reproduce).

Where I think they're getting the idea that this is evolution is at the line cultured at 42*. Its 20% fitter than the other lines. This is evolution?

Well, it reproduced at a greater rate when introduced to an even higher temperature. However, this site has deceptively very little information on what exactly happened to the bacteria to allow it to propogate better.

However, this can still fall under the general category of natural selection. The variance of data that allows certain copies of the bacteria to survive better in different temperatures already existed. The higher temperatures just cleaved off the bacteria that couldn't survive as well in higher temperatures, allowing the bacteria that already existed to survive in higher temperature to breed on, and as such this is useless.

Here's another possible answer, in e coli there is a palindromic structure around the ribosome binding site (I'll include some links to definitions) that can be eliminated to allow it to live better in heat. So if this was a mutation to live better in heat, we can assume on past experience that it was a mutation of elimination, which doesn't prove progressive evolution. In fact, the data to thrive in warm temperatures already exists in e coli, it just isn't expressed unless this mutation of loss occurs. Showing you still haven't proved how new data was created.

That's only if you want to take it that far, this can still be easily explained within the framework of the e coli's original genetics which vary and show that when you change the environment and rid the creature of some of the other genetic material, you can end up with something fitter relative to the new environment, though less variant. But not something that has progressed genetically speaking.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palindrome (this will semi-explain the palindromic structure mentioned, although you have to kind of understand the bare basics of genetics and you have to wade through some of the examples that have no bearing on this discussion, but the genetic definition is in there)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribosome

Next!

Actually, I'll have to do one or two a day because I don't have that much time for this stuff. Not like it matters anyway, I can disprove every single one of your so called 'good mutations' and you'll still find some excuse to believe evolution. And its not really a matter of good mutations which both creationists and evolutionists agree exist, it might be better described as disproving progressive mutations which evolutionists believe either based on lies or faith, and creationists know do not exist.

I'll give you another lesson tomorrow.

Posted By: jcl

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 04/13/06 09:07

Quote:

Where I think they're getting the idea that this is evolution is at the line cultured at 42*.

Actually I think the interesting fact is that both lines - at lower and at higher temperature - were fitter than the 37� line. Apparently, different modifications to the DNA are necessary to adapt to lower, and to higher temperature.

Of course, this result can be explained both by natural selection and by mutation. In order to decide whether it's selection or mutation, you need to analyze the modified parts of the DNA. Once you find the mechanisms for both low-temperature tolerance and high-temperature tolerance you know whether it's mutation or just selection. If it's a real mutation we'll again have one more piece of evidence for evolution. And of course, again one more piece to be be ignored by creationists. If it's not mutation however, both mechanisms must have been already in place in the DNA, just deactivated.

There are hundreds of such examples. I find it hard to believe to explain all of this with just selection, and not evolution. It all comes down again to if we accept that a) selection exists and b) mutations happen, it's a matter of time and probability to get evolution. The question is just how great the probability is. You just need to do the math. An "it will never happen" approach is never a good scientific argument.

Posted By: Doug

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 04/13/06 19:36

Quote:

That doesn't mean that healing doesn't come from God, it simply means it definately does not come from man's desires.

I'm not going to come down on pro or anti God here, I just wanted to point out that �man's desire� to become healthy does have a measurable effect. Patients who �fight for life� have a greater chance of living then those who just give up or put it all in the hands of a �higher power� (fate, God, FSM, whatever).

If you believe in God, that's great. But I don't think you can just sit back and put everything into His hands. Maybe free will is an illusion, but those that choice to set their own fate tend to do better in life.

(steps off soapbox

Posted By: Marco_Grubert

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 04/13/06 19:56

Quote:

Maybe free will is an illusion, but those that choice to set their own fate tend to do better in life.

If free will was an illusion then the rest of your sentence becomes meaningless

Posted By: Anonymous

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 04/13/06 20:03

"But I don't think you can just sit back and put everything into His hands"

"...faith without works is dead," (James 2:26)

No one is telling beleivers to switch on cruise control. To believers, if God wanted you to pray and forget, then there would be no such thing as physical reality, where pain, suffering, tiredness would exist. You need these as a sacrifice.

Posted By: Anonymous

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 04/13/06 20:04

(fate, God, FSM, whatever).

Finite State Machines?

Posted By: Marco_Grubert

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 04/13/06 20:14

FSM= Flying Spaghetti Monster http://www.venganza.org/
which is in fierce competition with the
IPU= Invisible Pink Unicorn (pbuh) http://www.palmyra.demon.co.uk/humour/ipu.htm

Posted By: Irish_Farmer

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 04/13/06 22:58

Quote:

In order to decide whether it's selection or mutation, you need to analyze the modified parts of the DNA.

That's why that site is kind of a sham. They just see results and assume its evolution without studying what's happening on the genetic level. At least creationists will break it down on a genetic level (of course they only do this because they believe it disproves evolution, but more information is better than none even if you believe in evolution).

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Once you find the mechanisms for both low-temperature tolerance and high-temperature tolerance you know whether it's mutation or just selection.

That's my point about most of these supposed progressive mutations. If you can't show a creature mutating to evolve into an environment that it would NEVER have survived in in the first place, then isn't all of this conjecture rather moot? (Even if you can, its just a start). All of the examples on the site can easily be explained by simple variations already programmed in the original genetic material of the organism which natural selection just widdled down, if you will. To say that a creature can adapt to changing environments is to agree with creationists. To say that that e coli will ever become anything except e coli no matter how long you give it, is just conjecture and these 'good' mutations don't bring scientists any closer to an answer. I'll do another one below, they start getting much easier.

In my experience in learning from these 'good mutations' is that its usually much simpler than that. But since the author of that site seems to think the results speak for themselves, we'll never really know. Which sucks. I have enough faith that I'm right that I wouldn't hesitate to reveal the results (even if it contradicts what I believe, because I believe that some future knowledge might reveal something that changes it to evidence for my view, and I know in the overall picture this example can't disprove my entire hypothesis). He has enough faith in what he believes that he doesn't care to analyze or reveal the results. He's just ready to believe whatever it is that concurs with what he has to say, even if that means not actually discovering the depth of what's going on. Figures.

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I'm not going to come down on pro or anti God here, I just wanted to point out that �man's desire� to become healthy does have a measurable effect. Patients who �fight for life� have a greater chance of living then those who just give up or put it all in the hands of a �higher power� (fate, God, FSM, whatever).

I'm talking about outside the physical realm. For instance, one cure for depression may be to exercise. This causes a chemical change and can balance people out in certain cases more than just sitting there. I wouldn't actually call it a total cure. Anyway, this has nothing to do with prayer. If I don't do anything to change myself (like say not letting doctors operate on me) and just pray, that means I'm putting my will over the will of God. Or if I sit on my ass and wollow in self pity and the only thing I do is pray, why should God care? He gave us the natural ability (or even unnatural in the form of pills) to help ourselves. If we aren't willing to try, why should he?

I might as well tell God that he owes me a cure just because I asked for it. I just happen to disagree with that thinking, so when someone tells someone to stop taking medication, there should be a better reason than faith (because in essence I see this as different than just a simple matter of faith). I have faith that I can do all I can as a human, including asking through prayer, and allowing doctors to help me, to see me through serious injury. I have faith that God CAN heal me, but I don't believe its always in my best interest to be healed. But I also believe that when bad things happen that I don't like, they're not always bad and I know its not up to me to make that distinction. That's different than saying I can control God with prayer.

In my opinion, of course. I just realized, that we might be slightly off key from each other on exactly what's being discussed. I might be reading more into the original post than I should.

Posted By: jcl

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 04/14/06 13:05

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All of the examples on the site can easily be explained by simple variations already programmed in the original genetic material of the organism which natural selection just widdled down, if you will. To say that a creature can adapt to changing environments is to agree with creationists. To say that that e coli will ever become anything except e coli no matter how long you give it, is just conjecture

Certainly not easily. When trying to explain away all observable evolution evidence with simple selection, you are forced to assume that species already have all those features already hidden in their DNA - loss of eyes, color change, whatever.

For what purpose would a bacteria need resistence against penicillin hidden in its genes? Bacteria were never confronted with penicillin until the 20th century. For what purpose would E.coli need a mechanism to survive 32� or 42� temperatures? They are normally never confronted with such temperatures in their environment.

Sure, you could assume that a benevolent creator would have foreseen that man will invent penicillin and would have given bacteria a potential resistance against it. But that's hardly a scientific explanation.

Attempts to explain such observations with just natural selection require assuming a very complex DNA with all sorts of hidden properties and features to be switched on when necessary. This looks like a very unlikely explanation to me - much more unlikely than the nucleotide change required for a good mutation. And how about virae that we _know_ to be able to develop into a completely different species by adopting foreign DNA parts into their own DNA? And how about all the evidence that mutation definitely exists? What mechanism should prevent good mutations?

You're of course free to ignore all evolution evidence or declare it "worthless". But withouth backing this with halfway likely alternative explanations, you're out of the field of science and deep in the field of faith.

Posted By: Irish_Farmer

Re: for doubters of God's existance DELETED - 04/14/06 18:58

(Post accidentally overwritten - sorry for that. I'm afraid some is lost, but the essential statements can be found in the quotes in my answer. - jcl)

Posted By: jcl

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 04/15/06 09:14

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Color change is along the same lines. They don't have the new color preprogrammed into them either. When flies lose pigment, its because the data that they derive their coloration from gets corrupted in much the same way as their eyes so they lose pigment.

The peppered moths actually gained pigment and did not lose it. And we do not know yet what exactly happens in their DNA - you seem to know more than all the scientists. Can you then explain what you mean with "corrupted" as opposed to "modified"?

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This is one example where it was a mutation (of preexisting DNA) actually. The bacteria Staphylococcus aureus already has an enzyme that can break down penecillin even if it isn't resistant. In this case, it became immune because a few mutants lost the ability to control the amount of enzyme produced. It was already in their data to limit this enzyme but that data either became corrupted or disappeared through mutation. However, it did not gain the ability out of nowhere. So this enzyme is over produced (at least more than normal), thus allowing it to survive a dose of penicillin.

This is only half true. Staphylococcus aureus originally did not produce that enzyme. It aquired the genes from another species, Staphylococcus sciuri. But the original form of these genes don't cause penicillin resistance either. In Staphylococcus aureus the aquired genes mutated into a new penicillin resistant form that didn't exist before. Only that mutated form then produced the enzyme in sufficient quantities.

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Mutation is the achilles heal of evolution. No one debates that it exists, but the problem is this question, "How useful is it for evolution?" Experimentation has showed that its only useful in damaging the order of DNA or at best being genetically neutral. You can write an equation to prove me wrong, but instead of using math I can show that 100% of the time it does not cause evolution of any kind.

Don't you see the obvious logical flaw in this statement?

Large scale mutations can't happen in a lab. In experiments you'll always get only small mutations unless you wait several thousand years. The conclusion that "mutation is only useful in damaging the order of DNA" is just wrong. A mutation is the less frequent the more nucleotides it affects. This is the reason why the development of an eye needs hundred thousands of years, while a mutation causing the loss of an eye happens within decades.

The more complex a mutation is, the more time it needs to happen - this is simple math. It has nothing to do with any fundamental difference between a "good" and a "bad" mutation that you seem to assume. The laws of probability don't care about whether a mutation is good or bad.

Well, we could go on and on with this. I see that you've firmly made up your mind that mutations are generally bad and 'good' mutations won't happen. And I'm afraid no one will be able drag you into a lab and show you beneficial mutations in action.

Posted By: Irish_Farmer

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 04/15/06 17:42

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The peppered moths actually gained pigment and did not lose it. And we do not know yet what exactly happens in their DNA - you seem to know more than all the scientists. Can you then explain what you mean with "corrupted" as opposed to "modified"?

I've already addressed this in the other thread, but I must ask, if the melanic data already existed, without knowing EXACTLY what's happening on the genetic level to cause the entire thing to become melanic instead of just part of it, we can still conclude that the melanic data wasn't written from scratch via mutation. More than likely, if a mutation was involved (which it need not be since its also likely that this moth existed in the first place as probably no more than 1% of the population) whatever genetic 'device' controls the pattern of melanism could have gotten shut off, or what have you. That's still not evolution.

However, based on the genetic evidence, its more likely that the original form was melanic and that the lighter variation is what was mutated since on the allele, dark is dominant. Mutations are generally not dominant.

Fact of the matter is that we'll probably never know for sure, because we can't go back in time and try and get a proper study of the population ratios (which would prove right off the bat whether it was a mutation or not in the first place). All I'm proposing is that this be filed under inconclusive. At best.

What I mean by corrupted is that it might get rewritten in such a way that it no longer has use. Let's say the gene that controls wing growth gets rewritten, the wings no longer grow. Its corrupted compared to its original purpose to have no more purpose.

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This is only half true. Staphylococcus aureus originally did not produce that enzyme. It aquired the genes from another species, Staphylococcus sciuri. But the original form of these genes don't cause penicillin resistance either. In Staphylococcus aureus the aquired genes mutated into a new penicillin resistant form that didn't exist before. Only that mutated form then produced the enzyme in sufficient quantities.

You basically restated everything I said. Except you added the irrelevant step of aureus getting it from sciuri. The mutation on said gene was the loss of control of the enzyme production. In the wild, this type of mutation would cause the bacteria to be less fit, because its wasting resources on uncontrolled production of this enzyme. In the case of penecillin being introduced however, it is more fit because this enzyme is produced in large enough quantities to prevent penicillin treatment. This mutation didn't write the ability for the cell to produce the enzyme, it unwrote the ability to control production. So, please, explain to me how this is evolution.

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Large scale mutations can't happen in a lab. In experiments you'll always get only small mutations unless you wait several thousand years.

And these mutations usually cause some loss of the overall order of the original genetics or at best simply have no effect, as also demonstrated in the example above. Tell me how piling thousands of these onto any species will eventually cause any organism to become some other organism over billions of years. I see what you're saying, we can't see the actual transition, but we can see the device that supposedly causes it to happen, and that device always reduces order or usefulness or has no effect (sometimes it rarely will be beneficial, but that's irrelevant), it doesn't write anything from scratch. Said writing from scratch is a requisite of evolution.

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This is the reason why the development of an eye needs hundred thousands of years, while a mutation causing the loss of an eye happens within decades.

Well, one of these is observable, the other one lies solely within the imagination of enlightened individuals. I think I'll stick with what we know can actually happen.

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It has nothing to do with any fundamental difference between a "good" and a "bad" mutation that you seem to assume.

I shouldn't refer to them as good or bad, that was a bad choice of words to convey what I was trying to say. There are good and bad mutations that we have observed. It would be more accurate to call mutations either progressive or regressive. One is 'upwards' the other is 'downwards' respectively, whether or not they end up being good or bad is irrelevant to evolution. Evolution requires that mutations eventually lead upwards and write data that never existed in the first place. I've since shown you how all the examples where scientists have assumed this has happened have turned out to be false, and are actually regressive, usually leading to a loss of fitness in the wild. Thus the idea of a progressive mutation is a fantastic idea, but an imaginary one nonetheless.

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I see that you've firmly made up your mind that mutations are generally bad and 'good' mutations won't happen.

Like I said, they aren't all bad. Its just whenever scientists claim something new is happening that never happens before, they're ignoring the obvious conclusion that this something new comes at a loss, or already existed to begin with. For instance, the bacteria producing this anti-penicillin enzyme in such large quantities was definately new, but they already were able to produce it, and they lost the ability to control it. That's a good mutation considering they would otherwise be wiped out by penicillin, but its genetically regressive, thus negating its purpose to evolution. It would be progressive to show that they never could produce the enzyme in the first place, and some random mutation gave them the ability to produce this enzyme, even in trace amounts. However, we know that they didn't gain this from nowhere, they just got it from another species. I'm still not convinced.

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And I'm afraid no one will be able drag you into a lab and show you beneficial mutations in action.

They probably won't have to. I'll hopefully be spending a lot of time in my future doing a great number of experiments myself. But who knows what the future holds.

Posted By: PHeMoX

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 04/16/06 20:32

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I shouldn't refer to them as good or bad, that was a bad choice of words to convey what I was trying to say. There are good and bad mutations that we have observed. It would be more accurate to call mutations either progressive or regressive. One is 'upwards' the other is 'downwards' respectively, whether or not they end up being good or bad is irrelevant to evolution. Evolution requires that mutations eventually lead upwards and write data that never existed in the first place. I've since shown you how all the examples where scientists have assumed this has happened have turned out to be false, and are actually regressive, usually leading to a loss of fitness in the wild. Thus the idea of a progressive mutation is a fantastic idea, but an imaginary one nonetheless.

Just because we can observe more regressive mutations than progressive mutations doesn't quite mean anything within evolution. A regressive mutation, which is infact 'damage done' with an effect we would expect, a negative one. Well those last three words aren't actually right, it's more that the mutations didn't decreased the chance of survival, so having this degradation, doesn't really make any difference. For example our ape-like ancestors lost their tails by a mutation, and because in the environment they lived during that evolutionary step, having a tail didn't increase the chance of survival of the species, it dissappeared. Personally I think this degradation of the tail might have taken quite some time, when having no tail, didn't really have a considerable advantage.

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Evolution requires that mutations eventually lead upwards and write data that never existed in the first place.

Evolution doesn't require anything, evolution is the effect of adaptations to the past by the mechanisms of "survival of the fittest", "natural selection" and "mutations". Wether this means we grow a third hand with data copied from existing gene-info, because we have a big advantage of having that third hand or if we would evolve into a species with fins so we can swim with not yet existing info does not matter. The fin-example might not be very good, because when we look at a certain point in the human's embryo development, then it has fin-like hands, so basically that would be degradation. Maybe wings are a better example then, but then again, when our species would only survive with wings, then there's still the possibility that our species just dies out, because we didn't develop wings with feathers so we could fly. Some things might theoretically be possible, yet may never happen at all. I think that's why regressive mutations play a big role in our evolution. I also think that if those regressive mutations that happened did decreased the chance of survival that the degradation would not have happened, so the degradation or any mutation for that matter will be passed on and only stay within a species when it's either neutral or positive for survival.

Cheers

Posted By: Irish_Farmer

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 04/17/06 01:31

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Just because we can observe more regressive mutations than progressive mutations doesn't quite mean anything within evolution.

No, what you mean to say is, "We only observe regressive mutations." There's no such thing as a progressive mutation, except what exists within the imagination of evolutionists.

A progressive mutation doesn't necessarily have to be a good mutation, and a regressive mutation isn't necessarily a bad mutation. When I say progressive and regressive, I'm referring to what happens on the genetic level, not on the natural selection level.

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so having this degradation, doesn't really make any difference

In the case of evolution it does. If you keep degrading a bacteria species, no matter how many times you degrade it it will never become a human.

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For example our ape-like ancestors lost their tails by a mutation

An opinion. No one saw this happen. And since the 'tail' bone has a purpose, and we would be worse off without it, it stands to reason that it was in our original design as a human, not as an ancestor of ape. Either way, what you're saying is simply opinion. Prove that we used to have tails once. I'd love to see that happen.

I know you can't show how it devolved from ape tails, but the point is is that you have no physical evidence of it happening. And unless you can prove the mechanism (mutations) for it to happen, then you might as well quit repeating your opinion.

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Evolution doesn't require anything

This just goes to show how little you understand the theory you believe. Evolution requires that vast amounts of genetic data be written from scratch. Otherwise a germ couldn't become an ape, or a snail, or anything else.

So it has requirements.

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Wether this means we grow a third hand with data copied from existing gene-info

So you're saying that non-evolutionary changes can lead to change. You're just getting the different definitions of evolution confused. Evolution loosely means change, but that doesn't mean that all change falls within the category of the kind of evolution you're talking about. If creatures are constantly degrading over time, that doesn't show how your version of evolution can happen.

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when we look at a certain point in the human's embryo development, then it has fin-like hands, so basically that would be degradation.

No. It would mean that ours hands don't magically spring into hands out of nowhere, we have to start as a ball of unformed cells before we become well-formed adults. This has nothing to do with anything. I'm absolutely baffled....

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I think that's why regressive mutations play a big role in our evolution.

No, you think regressive mutations play a big role in evolution because you don't even know the basics (the extreme basics) of genetic theory.

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any mutation for that matter will be passed on and only stay within a species when it's either neutral or positive for survival.

I already know how evolution supposedly works. Please, you don't need to try and teach me how evolution works. All the supposed evidence of evolution hasn't stood up to scrutiny or the test of time. Your theory is failing.

Posted By: lostclimate

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 05/16/06 22:54

my opinion is of no consequence, but, I believe god exists, GO SUPER COOL JESUS WITH SUNGLASSES

Posted By: PHeMoX

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 05/17/06 01:23

-The tail bone doesn't have a purpose at all.
-Evolution doesn't require new data to be written from scratch the way you think it does. It goes way more gradually, thinking about a germ to ape is a step that's way to big. Yes, it happened in the long run, but you don't wish to see all the steps in between.
-Just because you believe there is no such thing as progressive mutation, doesn't mean they can't happen/didn't appear in the past.

-Growing a third hand because of an mutation is basically a form of evolution when it gives an advantage having that 3rd hand. Thus what do you mean with non-evolutionary change here? Just because you don't believe in evolution, doesn't mean you can simply ignore that fact that we see it as part of evolution. (i'm talking mutations, beneficial ones.) You try to fit the evolution theory within your framework of thoughts, that's not going to fit at all when you keep having this biased view on it. No, I'm not saying it's wrong or something to not believe in the evolution theory.
-'progressive' or 'regressive' on the genetic level is basically equal in effect to the natural selection level, you make a distinction where there is none to be found and I was referring to the same. A genetic change affects the natural selection process just aswell.

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No. It would mean that ours hands don't magically spring into hands out of nowhere, we have to start as a ball of unformed cells before we become well-formed adults. This has nothing to do with anything. I'm absolutely baffled....

You're not understanding my point here at all. I meant that if there's information that let's us develop hands from fin-like shapes first, then it doesn't surprise me at all that a mutation could cause fins to stay. Just to give an example of an effect of degradation. Well if one way is possible, what makes the other way less possible? The writing of new genetic data from scratch is a non-argument, because is it really impossible like you suggest? No, to say the least there are all kinds of mutations that have caused certain humans to have 6 or even 7 fingers, a second ear, not fully developed hands or feet etc. etc.

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I already know how evolution supposedly works. Please, you don't need to try and teach me how evolution works. All the supposed evidence of evolution hasn't stood up to scrutiny or the test of time. Your theory is failing.

Honestly your statements keep telling me otherwise.

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In the case of evolution it does. If you keep degrading a bacteria species, no matter how many times you degrade it it will never become a human.

This for example. You don't believe new genetic data can come into existance through mutations, that's fine, but it is a part of the evolution theory. A little gambling with the building blocks of life sounds more plausible to me then the creation theory and we've got more evidence, were creationists got nothing.

And about that evidence not standing up to scrutiny or the test of time, I don't agree, quite the contrary, your religion is failing. Believe what you wish, 'dark age' and biblical prediction or not, but I would not be surprised when christianity would dissappear within a few decades (50-100 yrs?) because religion itself has failed to withstand the test of time. Again, where is your evidence for creation? Your theory isn't scientific, that means backed-up properly with solid evidence. Your theory is based around a faith, evolution is no religious belief. Yes, the evolution theory has it's question marks in certain areas, but those are only small pieces in the big puzzle. You claim there are too much assumptions going through life as facts, well then I also want to remind you that evolution is a theory and in my opinion a pretty plausible one and not every assumption is false. Infact I could write a book about all the assumptions your belief has. 900 year old people, changing water into wine, parting seas multiple times, floods, eve comming from adam's rib (it would make more sense if it happened the other way around if you ask me.) All this based upon the assumption of the possible existance of a God. Infact the bible is claimed to be a historic overview of what happened, and that's probably the biggest assumption of them all. What if the bible is wrong? What if all those miracles are just the imagination of their respective authors? What if it has been oral tradition written down in multiple books, just folklore? That would explain certain events that appear more than once. You see why I doubt your theory and thus the existance of God?

Darn, I'm starting to sound like a priest now. (I've got nothing against priests, I've only got something against the way they talk.

)

Cheers

Posted By: Irish_Farmer

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 05/27/06 05:57

Whoa, totally forgot about this thread.

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-The tail bone doesn't have a purpose at all.

I think somewhere along the line we established that I was right on this one, so I won't keep bringing it up.

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-Evolution doesn't require new data to be written from scratch the way you think it does. It goes way more gradually, thinking about a germ to ape is a step that's way to big. Yes, it happened in the long run, but you don't wish to see all the steps in between.

Who said it didn't have to happen gradually? Whether it happens slowly or not, its still requires new data to be written. If you can, compare just the number of nucleotides of the simplest microbe to that of a human. The number of nucleotides alone will tell you that there's quite a difference, if you can't make the common sense connection.

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-Just because you believe there is no such thing as progressive mutation, doesn't mean they can't happen/didn't appear in the past.

The burden of proof isn't on me.

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-Growing a third hand because of an mutation is basically a form of evolution when it gives an advantage having that 3rd hand. Thus what do you mean with non-evolutionary change here? Just because you don't believe in evolution, doesn't mean you can simply ignore that fact that we see it as part of evolution.

It would appear because the 'schematic' for an arm jumped locations. The arm isn't being written up from scratch, the data for it already exists. You're just scrambling DNA into new locations (literally scrambling body parts into new locations). However, this doesn't provide any insight into the possibility of a human having been written from a microbe.

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You try to fit the evolution theory within your framework of thoughts, that's not going to fit at all when you keep having this biased view on it.

You keep trying to squeeze non-evolutionary events into the theory of evolution because there's no actual record of evolution happening. So you've gotta grasp for some kind of straw I suppose.

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'progressive' or 'regressive' on the genetic level is basically equal in effect to the natural selection level, you make a distinction where there is none to be found and I was referring to the same. A genetic change affects the natural selection process just aswell.

There is a difference. I'll state the difference again. Let's say that beetles living on a windy island mutate to LOSE their wings. On the genetic level this is obviously a loss. Its regressive. However, now they don't get blown away into the water by the wind. So on the natural selection level is a positive thing. These two ideas are exclusive, and I think if you understood exactly what was going on you wouldn't believe evolution in the least. You would scoff at it in fact because you would realize how many times you've been lied to (incidentally).

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I meant that if there's information that let's us develop hands from fin-like shapes first, then it doesn't surprise me at all that a mutation could cause fins to stay.

It should. Genetics and cells are really quite amazing. And the millions of specific details of cell behavior in a developing human argue strongly against your point here. The reason our hands aren't fused together is because some cells between our fingers know to commit suicide to give us independent digits.

Its a very complex and yet precise process determined by genetics. From the layman perspective (of which I admit I am part of, although I have studied up a bit and do understand the problem) I can see why it might be easy to jump to the conclusion that our hands are real close to fins. But in fact, they're very far away.

Unless I'm mistaken, a mutation somewhere along the lines of what you were talking about has been recorded in history. Webbed hands. They don't turn into fins, they turn into 'freaks' of nature. I'll begrudgingly give you that this can be a beneficial mutation. I suppose swimming 0.01 km/h faster is something of a benefit, although it comes at the rather detrimental loss of some of the finger independence. Now, we have to lose the data that tells the hand to still become a hand (with the hand skeletal structure, and still distinct fingers between the webbing). Of course, if we lose all of that we just have formless nubs, so the data for the fins has to be written. In this case, not from scratch, but it must be NEW DATA. The data for the fin does not exist. Not to mention that in order to be useful, a rather large rewrite of the arm would be in order.

So I suppose on the most simplistic levels, evolution seems rather plausible. But when you really understand the wonderful nature of God's design, it becomes painfully clear that evolution is entirely lacking.

Of course, its only this rather simplistic level of evolution that's presented to students in school. They don't teach the kids how to grapple with problems like why breasts would grow on lizards when it provides no advantage until all of the other dozens of effects take place. Evolution should only be discussed on the simplest of levels, because that's the only place it seems plausible.

I think if evolutionists were actually fair in presenting their TRUE beliefs to students, they would get laughed out of the classroom. I always hear them complain about how the public is generally lacking in understanding of evolution. But a faulty teaching of evolution is the only way it can be believed. Oh well...

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No, to say the least there are all kinds of mutations that have caused certain humans to have 6 or even 7 fingers, a second ear, not fully developed hands or feet etc. etc.

Again, these fingers appear from pre-existing dna. They aren't written again. In fact, they happen within one generation which is about a 10,000 times faster than evolution predicts. Its not even in the evolutionary ballpark.

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Honestly your statements keep telling me otherwise.

Coincidentally, your arguments had nearly required me to say the same thing to you.

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A little gambling with the building blocks of life sounds more plausible to me then the creation theory and we've got more evidence

You have no evidence. You read your theory into a wide open plethora of natural records that can be 'read' any number of ways. Whereas, conveniently, nothing from your theory can be observed in modern science....except that things look the same! Which is why we know skyscrapers weren't created, but evolved.

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were creationists got nothing.

We have the creation!

It acts exactly in accordance with how God's word says it would.

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your religion is failing.

Agreed. But I don't agree for the same reason that you do.

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but I would not be surprised when christianity would dissappear within a few decades (50-100 yrs?) because religion itself has failed to withstand the test of time.

It won't ever disappear actually, though its going to definately become more and more marginalized, which would only rest on ancient predictions.

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Again, where is your evidence for creation? Your theory isn't scientific, that means backed-up properly with solid evidence.

Do you even know what my theory is.

Every time a dog gives birth to a dog, my theory is backed up. Every time we can make a hybrid from microevolved subspecies of a kind, my theory is vindicated. Every time an animal is micro evolved into a new species that's entirely less fit, more disease prone, and has less genetic potential, my theory is vindicated. Every time we try and find ways that life could have started on its own, and fail miserably, my theory is vindicated. Every time we look around at the chaos of the universe and see just how well designed our world is, my theory is vindicated.

I fail to see not only how my theory (who's predictions pretty much always come true) is not scientific.

Every time a mutation only causes a genetic loss of information (as it always does) my theory is again vindicated. Your theory WON'T die because it can't, not in the mind of atheists who will reject their creator at all costs. However, it has died, and its been dead almost since its inception. Its just running on extreme life support, not to mention ignorance.

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What if the bible is wrong? What if all those miracles are just the imagination of their respective authors? What if it has been oral tradition written down in multiple books, just folklore?

That's easy. Then I die, and nothing happens to me. I just disappear into the nothingness. What if you're wrong though? Where are you going to spend the rest of eternity? I don't really have anything to lose here, but in fact, in the realm of hypotheticals, you have quite a bit more to lose.

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That would explain certain events that appear more than once. You see why I doubt your theory and thus the existance of God?

No, in fact, I don't. You believe a theory without evidence, and you also believe that the universe is a self-creating scientific contradiction. Its, in fact, rather hard for me to drop my belief in my God to believe some wordly confusion meant to make me deny my creator. I don't have the arrogance to turn a cold shoulder to a God powerful enough to create our universe.

Remind me to touch on 'similar events' in the bible contradiction thread.

Posted By: MathewAllen

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 06/26/06 03:48

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Do you even know what my theory is.

Every time a dog gives birth to a dog, my theory is backed up. Every time we can make a hybrid from microevolved subspecies of a kind, my theory is vindicated. Every time an animal is micro evolved into a new species that's entirely less fit, more disease prone, and has less genetic potential, my theory is vindicated. Every time we try and find ways that life could have started on its own, and fail miserably, my theory is vindicated.

Why don't you tell us your theory please? You seem to know the evolutionary theory better then some of it's supporters.

Because, from what I see of your theory it's not affected positively or negatively by anything humans do, or anything negative that happens to a species' gene pool. Evolutionary theory's detrimment is not creationism's gain when both are considered in abstract, as they should be. It take's just as much faith to believe in either at the moment - Personally I don't buy either. Though I like the idea of evolution, it's poetic, inspiring. Socially useful.

Posted By: Irish_Farmer

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 06/26/06 21:33

Quote:

Why don't you tell us your theory please? You seem to know the evolutionary theory better then some of it's supporters.

The only reason I'm hesitant to start a topic on my theory is I don't want to spend a month answering stupid questions about Noah's ark. If I really thought you guys were interested in learning about the scientific aspects of my theory, then I would start a thread about it. But it wouldn't be a discussion even about the theory. It would end up as a discussion about God and the bible.

"What's the difference?" Well if it gets into a discussion of the bible and God no one is going to even care about the science of my theory, they're just going to try and prove the bible wrong, or say it makes no sense to believe in God. If we can discuss the biological aspect of my theory, we might get some where. But the bilogical aspect of my theory is self-evident. You watch animals reproduce after their kind constantly, etc.

If we get into the biological aspect of my theory, it will inevitably revert back to evolution. I'll say that animals reproduce after their kind, while sexual reproduction allows the shuffling of genes to speciate within that kind. Then someone will be like, "Well evolution this and evolution that." Either outcome of a thread on creation is useless.

Posted By: mpdeveloper_B

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 07/24/06 23:33

this thread has completely trailed away from it's original purpose

NOOOOOOOOOOOO IT'S OUT OF CONTROL....*sigh* sorry....

Cheers!

lol

Posted By: sPlKe

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 07/26/06 17:41

i give you somethign new to talk about. it furhter proofs that there is no god, sicne if there would be a god, all of us would be the same. but i tell you something...

i call myself and some others a new species. we are not mere humans, but the next step of evolution.
this may sound drastic, and maybe a bit x-men but let me explain.

i for instance i never got wisdom teeht. i will never get some. there is just nothing there that would make them come, the dentist said. lucky me, sicne 99% of everyone must pull them out anyway.
they are useless nowadays.

im never sick. in fact, i am the worlds healthiest human since im a kid. i never got one illness except the flu after i ran around naked as a kid in winter (i fell out of my window, 3 meters, did not broke anything (i landed in snow) and then i ran arund. when my mum saw me, she was scared to death...) i have perfect eyes, perfect teeth (except the position, wich is by the way not a natural fault but the fault of my old stepfather) i have a skin that is tolerant to pain to a bigger degree than those of most humans, i have a great operating blood system the pulse and blood pressure of a athlet and so on...

in fact, i am bodily speaken the perfect human (healthy, looks is based on opinion of course, though i must admit that most women think im handsome)...

there are dozens of people like me out there...

some people i know are asexual. while most humans do not understand this, i do.
think about it. when youre not interested in sex, youre not giving in to our ancient desires. those people spend their time investigating and doind real stuff while we spend our time having sex or looking for people to have sex with.
if they one day find someone they can really love, they know this because they dont care if he is sexy or not, they care about this person and nothign else. then they can either have sex or not, depending on how they are. but those brains are perfect for a new race, a race that doesn follow animal instincts like our brains...

my bet is, the next step in human evolution will be humans with my kind of body, and the brains of those people, who are (almost all of them) intelligent to a degree (id say 130-140 IQ). people who dont get sick, and who dont fight for thingslike women or pwoer, because they are far above those limits...

and thats why i call myself of a new race. becaue im 100% sure that this will be evolutions next step.

evolution cannot do drastic steps. if you are too different, youll be hunted and killed or hunted and researched...
if yorue to wea to live, you wont die, you will stay alive because its "morally right". its insane. so evolution had to think of a new way to evolve.

and thats why i dont belive in a god. not because i am some bad heavy metal satan guy. i dont belive in satan obviously. i do not belive in god because not only has the bible been proven a bazillion times wrong (you do know that the bible STILL states that earht is flat and fixed in the unvierse and that the sun and the stars surround us?) no it just is obvious, because if there is a god, and if mankind is the last step of evolution, then people like me may exist, but there wont be anything above us.
and weall know we will lose our toes and grow an extra finger within the next million of years...

Posted By: Nardulus

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 07/26/06 21:14

@Spike, Wow you sound like one of those cool X-Files Super Soliders.

Anyways, when your super health starts to decline, when your good looks decline and you get laid less often, and your friends move on. You will find there is one constant, that is God.

God will always love you, and accept you. When things are going as good as they are for you, its hard to think God had anything to do with it.

To me, it sounds like God has blessed you very much, and when you need him in your life he will be there for you.

In the meantime enjoy, and maybe think about why you are blessed with such good health, good looks, and a great mind.

Peace,

Ken

Posted By: Anonymous

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 07/26/06 23:03

and then zeus smited nardulus as a heathen

LONG LIVE ZEUS!!!

Posted By: Matt_Aufderheide

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 07/27/06 15:41

Quote:

You will find there is one constant, that is God.

How exactly do you find this? Your delusion is not neccessarily going to be shared by everyone else.

Posted By: Machinery_Frank

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 07/27/06 16:01

You can create your own constants in real life. Doing sports is one of them. You can grow up a familiy or become an artist. There are so many things in the world that can make you happy and give a goal.

Making god your only constant is really cheap and can lead into dependency, anergic state and maybe self-pity.

Posted By: Nardulus

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 07/27/06 16:45

Quote:

How exactly do you find this? Your delusion is not neccessarily going to be shared by everyone else.

One man's delusion is another man's truth.

Quote:

Making god your only constant is really cheap and can lead into dependency, anergic state and maybe self-pity.

I did not say that. As people and things come and go in your life, God will always be there, from birth to death. That's what I mean as a constant. Duh.

Ken

Posted By: Matt_Aufderheide

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 07/27/06 17:48

what if you decide to change relgions and become a Buddhist? Is Budda always there instead of Gosd then? Or do they hang together on a cloud somewhere?

Posted By: Nardulus

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 07/27/06 18:38

Quote:

what if you decide to change relgions and become a Buddhist? Is Budda always there instead of Gosd then? Or do they hang together on a cloud somewhere?

I can't speak for the Buddist religon.

It would be cool to be able to hang on a cloud with both of them.

I hope, in actuality they are one in the same.

Ken

Posted By: Matt_Aufderheide

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 07/27/06 21:11

What if you are an atheist, is god always there anyway? What if god got sick of waiting around and left? You really have no clue and you just HOPE that there is a god, becasue you are afraid of death, and cant deal with life.

Posted By: mpdeveloper_B

Re: for doubters of God's existance - 07/28/06 19:14

Quote:

One man's delusion is another man's truth.

i agree, this is true for everyone. there are two types of truth, singular truth, is what a person believes, what you believe is what is true to you, this goes for everyone. So from a point of view, everyone who has posted here, if you believe what you posted, it is true, it is true to you and therefore it is true. Total truth is the second kind of truth and this truth is what is real, not only to one person, but to everyone that discovers it, not everyone will believe total truth, but to those that do not, to them it is a lie, and therefore leads to their "singular" truth.

Conclusion: everyone will believe certain things, but there are very few that will learn the Total truth, there are very few that will go out of their understanding to investigate God and all other aspects of life, these are the people that know Total Truth.

Quote:

Is Budda always there instead of Gosd then? Or do they hang together on a cloud somewhere?

Well for the people that believe in buddha, to them it is true and so they have their own understanding, you can't push away another persons truth. This goes back to what i said above, Singular Truth.

Do i believe in God, yes, Do i believe in Science, yes.
I believe that both christianity and science go hand in hand, science helps prove the existance of creatures, while christianity tells you how you got here, and who put you here.

To those trying conversions, it will not work, part of being human is believeing your own truth, and trying to find out who you are and why you are here, but no one is going to try and believe you without a scientific explination, this started out as a science and christianity forum and i don't know what it is now.

Cheers everyone, enjoy your debate, but if anyone of you get annoyed by this thread and what others are posting, then please leave. Also dont post trying to prove your point, you can't prove your "Truth" to anyone, because it interfere's with thier's, and if it does, it's like jabbing a katana through their stomach and twisting it, so to all christians in this topic, please dont tell someone they are wrong and you are right, or they will jab that same katana back at you.

-Manslayer101

for doubters of God's existance