@ Checkbutton
Why ban all my friends?
If you ban all of them, then all I got is a lot of foes around here.
lol


Yes, they resemble apes, because they are apes.
there are few "missing links" in the fossil record, but there should be many of them if it were true. The few missing links they claim to have are in dispute.

The brain is the most complex part of the human body.
They can do "heart transplants and kidney transplants.

But, how about a brain transplant?
Nope, it's not possible, because medical science knows that it's just too complicated.

but yet, an evolutionary scientist will claim that the brain is only a product of time and has no designer. lol, haha!

Yeah, It's funny when a person thinks about it.

so you believe a god can make you on an instant, but he couldnt set up a system that eventually after billions/trillions of mutations makes a human brain?

If you really can answer only one question per person, I would appreciate it if you pick the most difficult one to answer. Let's say, my last question.



If you really think you have seen the light, that would be very narcistic. Other than non-believers, who generally keep searching for meassurable proof and never settle down with a theory taken for truth.

But I wouldn't think it's odd, being narcistic. We place mirrors everywhere to look to ourselves. And whole mankind has been narcistic back in the days.

"Mankind depicted God to his image".

And the evidence is obvious. Who wouldn't want to be like a God, if you had the chance? The ultimate goal. And why would we want to go to heaven eternally? To get a little closer to this goal perhaps?

Though, admittedly, without this behaviour, we wouldn't have had science either. We look into mirrors to try and understand ourselves. We try to understand the universe, and as a side result, come up with fairytales like "God". <- Oh no I called God a fairytale! Be sure to comment on this one and not on the rest of this post!

Just because we disagree on our world views, shouldn't mean you're excluding friendships because of that though.

Lol, perhaps it's a shortsighted view, but in my mind that's exactly why religious people tend to wage their wars. :P

When it comes to friendship, I really couldn't care less if someone is an atheist or christian or hindu or Scientologist (what?!).

When you think about it long enough, you'll discover their God can not do lots of things.

You know, make a stone that's too heavy even for him to lift, even though he supposedly is able to lift any and all stones being almighty, right?

It's easy to see how 'almightiness' doesn't make any sense in a practical sense. This is true for many of the other characteristics, like 'it's presence', that's at the same time very much a non-presence.

Excellent point, lostclimate!

And you know what? I'm a Christian.

I've never posted here, but sometimes read threads for a laugh, lol. But sometimes I'm bothered by the amount of conflict between atheists and Christians today (not just here, everywhere). It's really sad. So, I hope to make a few points and at least get people thinking, even if you don't agree with me. The thesis of my monstrous post is that one CAN believe in BOTH God AND science. And, we ALL rely on "faith"; we just put in in different things/places.

It's a proven fact that ADAPTATIONS occur naturally in the animal kingdom. WE can even produce them artificially amongst a certain genus. Look at dogs... They came from wolves as a result of our artificial breeding. Chickens... They came from wild jungle fowl which we domesticated and selectively bred for their fighting abilities (surprisingly, not food, but cockfighting! One of the oldest known sports! Lol! :D).

Most people don't realize what the Bible, as we Christians know it, is meant to be. The Old Testament is a compilation of Jewish history and oral tradition. Every story is NOT to be taken literally (like any other work of literature, duh). Many stories are metaphors, parables, and analogies to demonstrate abstract points about life, God, the earth, etc. I've often wondered if the story of Adam and Eve is a parable that gives an abstract account of the Neolithic revolution, and man becoming intelligent and self conscious; developing the concepts of good and evil, and becoming forever separated from animals.

However, it is VERY true that the universe and earth was created in only six days. How? You've heard it took billions of years, right? Well, that is also true. Time is all about perspective. When the "Big Bang" occurred, according to contemporary science, matter exploded from the singularity in all directions. As the universe unfolded, space and time were warped by a factor of 1trillion. From earth, the universe appears to be anywhere from 12-16billion years old. To find the age of the universe at the very center, where either the "Big Bang" or "God" (whatever you believe) created everything from, we must divide the 15billion (for this point) by that factor of 1trillion. Doing so, we arrive at 0.015, which converted to earth days equals 6 days. And no, that's not "religious", it's "Einstein-ian" physics in action. Time and space simply aren't constants, as we think they are on earth. Time travel is actually possible from traveling at high speeds. We just lack the technology to go fast enough to make any significant leaps.

Back to life and "Evolution" before I try to cut this off....

Like I said, adaptation in plants and animals is undeniable. However, there are MANY problems with the "Theory of Evolution" as it is presented in textbooks and by scientists. The main problem is that a large portion of its assertions are totally unsubstantiated. First and foremost, the concept of "spontaneous generation". There's not a single shred of evidence that raw elements can just "create" life without outside influence. WE can not even produce it in a laboratory. The idea violates a very old law of science: Life can only be produced by other life. Louis Pasteur disproved the "Spontaneous Generation" theory in the 1800s. But somehow, it was resurrected for the theory of evolution. Life does not "generate" from elements today. Some scientists claim it is because the conditions on early earth were different, however attempts at doing it in a lab always fail (even though conditions can be fully controlled). It just doesn't work. Only amino acids can be formed in a lab, which sadly, are water-soluble. Therefore the "primordial soup" idea is also bunk. This idea also violates the second law of thermodynamics (look it up, too long to explain). The fact is, life can NOT be generated naturally NOR artificially. In fact, the simplest of bacteria is far more complex than a clock or an internal combustion engine. There are actually better odds of a clock or engine being produced "naturally" by the environment than life. And all of the "materials" needed to "generate" one exist naturally. Trippy!

The next problem with evolutionary theory deals with the concept of "mutation", and lifeforms transforming in radical ways (i.e., eventually going from a frog to a bird). Firstly, mutations always have one of three basic effects: 1) harm to the organism 2) kills the organism 4) no/negligible effect. Hemophilia and albinism are examples of mutations (obviously bad things). Humans are one of the only animals that can survive things like hemophilia because we have the medical technology to do so. Even albinism is deadly to wild animals because they are often blind, and always too poorly camo'd to survive. Therefore, they don't pass on their genes (which is actually good). You'd never want your child to have a mutation and "evolve", lol. Plain and simple, mutations are never good, and can not explain the diversity of life on earth. Secondly, there is NO genome flexible enough to "evolve" as extremely as the theory requires. A fish simply can not become a bird, no matter what. Humans have selectively bred animals for all of history, yet we can not go any further than making changes to a genus>species. Even with our hi-tech labs, cloning, and gene manipulation, we can not produce such radical changes even in billions of lifespans of bacteria (we have tried). We've also tried with fruit flies and other organisms that reproduce and die very quickly. It allows us to simulate millions, even billions of years of mammal "evolution" in a lab. We've produced interesting bacteria and flies, but never anything more than what we started with (flies and bacteria). I believe the "canis" (canine/dog/wolf) genome is the most flexible in animalia, yet we can not produce anything other than a new breed of canine. No cows, no monkeys, and no fish.

So here's the current scoreboard:

Universe had a beginning : PROVEN
Adaptation through selective reproduction : PROVEN
The modern "Theory of Evolution" : NOT PROVEN
Creationism as described by most Christians : NOT PROVEN

Evolution and Creationism BOTH rely on faith. We can not "prove" either one. It's that simple, yet many people are literally at each others' throats about "who is right".

In reality, there is NO conflict between science and religion. You can believe in BOTH. Science is to explain the "how", and religion can explain the "why". Science has no explanation for why we exist. Religion doesn't explain how we exist. Believing in both can give you a much better understanding of your existence (for some people). There is no need to fight over it or hate each other.

Personally, I don't see WHY anything should exist without a higher, sentient power. Why would life essentially "create" itself from raw elements so that it could feel pain and suffer? Then why would it "evolve" (if it could) to more advanced forms, more conscious and aware of its own suffering? Why should a universe/multiverse and any type of matter exist? And where in hell did that "singularity" responsible for the Big Bang come from? Of course, we can ask where did God come from as well. But I see an omnipotent and omnipresent God as being "infinite", having no beginning or end. Such a God is unexplainable and inconceivable with human language or even the human mind. Maybe one day we will understand, when we leave this world behind? Who knows? It blows your mind to think about the universe's origins whether you believe in God or not!

Sorry to go on and on for so long, but I hope I made an impact on all the "bad blood" between believers and non-believers. We ALL rely on faith, and have personal convictions and beliefs that we can not prove. And it is wrong to hate each other over those beliefs. At the end of the day, one thing is certain: we are all human beings who are stuck on this same planet together, and we might as well make the best of it!

Science doesn't rule out the concept of God (by definition), but it's stupid to say science relies on faith, it's not a religion.

Instead it is based on a lot more than the believe in thinking it's correct. It's based on laws, based on reproducible experiments, based on methods and basically based on actual proof as good as it can get.

Having faith in a God is not comparable at all to the reproducible knowledge science gives us.

Having faith in a God often implies disbelieving certain essential discoveries of science too, which hardly makes sense if you combine the two. You'll get silly ideologies where people believe in evolution, but still hold on to their believe in Jesus as being a supernatural God on Earth.

Remember that's a distinct difference in having confidence your methods are right and therefore the results tell us things about the truth, and having blind faith in something that hardly can be tested at all, let alone makes little sense in a theoretical and philosophical sense.

After all, why should there really even be a God when we already understand many of the ancient issues we used to invent Gods for??




Actually, you're quite wrong here. We may not be able to directly disprove God's existence (yet), but there's a whole lot we can certainly explain without supernatural causes. This is of course discarded by religious people, but in the end the 'faiths' you're speaking off are hardly the same kind.

Within science there's also a clear difference between laws, theories and so on. Sort of the different variations of how 'true' a certain idea will be. Contrary to religions, science doesn't arrogantly claim to have absolute knowledge though, hence why lots of theories are considered 'more than extremely likely to be true', but not considered absolute truth.

In a philosophical sense, science doesn't really deal with truths in an absolute sense at all, but only with relative knowledge.

This seems to be hard to grasp for religious people, but it's really not the same has having blind faith in an ancient and outdated idea for which there's no evidence at all.



It's very ironic how on one hand you say you can't possibly believe that something this incredible has happened while it clearly has, yet on the other hand you strongly believe a magical God must exist and be responsible even though that's really even much more far fetched and seemingly impossible.

After all, regardless of what started it, we can all witness right here and now where evolution and so on has brought us.



It's neither unexplainable nor inconceivable, it's basically not more than a philosophical answer anyways and nothing concrete. It's more a gigantic sign of not wanting to admit that you do not have an answer.

Not having an answer is fine, but pretending to know anyway is just incredible silly and strange.

Many people will have a 'gut feeling' that there should be an explanation or answer some where. But just because we're used to how things tend to make sense to some extent, doesn't mean it should be true for everything within our universe. Remember that in the most abstract way, things that 'seemingly do not make sense' are rather a good sign of our lack of understanding. I'm confident we can comprehend anything, not comprehending something simply means we should gather more knowledge so we CAN comprehend it.

The whole idea that things are too complex and unconceivable is just odd by definition, as it rules out future knowledge on beforehand.

So far, there's really absolutely no reason to assume Gods were either responsible for or present during the massive development of everything around us.

Nice post Jaeger, and good that you point out that a lot of the stories in the bible are metaphores and the like. I'm saddened that most people take them literally, both atheists and religious people.


And this is what most believers will not accept, or admit. That the God theory they believe to be true might adapt in the future, as it has been many times in the past. If you'd say this some seven hundred years ago in public, you'd be hanging that very day! The God theory changes every time science discovers new things. Were six days simply six rotations of the earth, now it's coupled to the very beginning of time and space.


On to the evolution subject:
Indeed, but as we keep trying to point out, science is not done yet! We've just started to understand the genes and mechanics within micro-organisms. How can you judge science so fast, while not giving a chance to prove itself? Wouldn't that be only fair? Or are you afraid that we might discover how it all works in the near future? There's no need to deny anything, just adapt the God theory again. Eventually we'll find the answer together.

Totally rejectable, a plastic digital alarm clock will never spontaneously be created just by loose elements present in the universe. It can not happen in an infinite amount of time UNLESS, unless some higher form creates it. But that does not mean the higher form is higher than the clock he created. The clock was made from the higher form's idea. It has been made out of complex thinking processes and applied chemics and physics. Therefore, I see the clock as a more complex object than the being that created it. The function of the object does not necessary define the complexity!

And the higher form? He's not made out of plastics, chips, wires and buttons, nor runs on exactly 12 volts. He's made of the basic (yet complex) organisms, which are made of the basic elements present all around us (no, not plastics).



You seem to be making no point out of this one. First, frogs do not mutate in a bird, because they are both from a different branch of evolution going way way way back. And yes, mutations CAN BE bad. Albinism isn't a nice thing. Yet it only emphatizes how nature is NOT perfect, thus another evidence how it is NOT created by a perfect God.


A fish can not become a bird, correct. But one, a genome has no property named flexibility. And two, if sufficient proper genes are hit by radiation or miscopied RNA, the animal will transform into a slightly different being. And animals don't live near as long as we do. A salamander lives about 7 years. Let's see, 488 million years ago life has exploded onto land, let's assume an ancestor of our salamander lived back then. So, 14 million generations, let's say one on four has undergone a slight mutation, visible or not. Then, 3.5 million mutations are not enough to make a four legged Cambrian being look like the salamander as we know it now? Then I think you do not realise how fast evolution CAN handle, if forced.


Laboratory may have simulated hundreds of years of generations with fruitflies (millions of years don't make sense. A fruitfly lives between 37 and 110 days. So that'd be 27 thousand years of research) but a fruitfly is already quite advanced. A fly has not been evolved much since the dawn of insects. It could very well be that the fly simply can not change anymore.

You keep thinking that dogs evolve into monkeys and fishes, but that's not how evolution works. A dog can not jump onto the evolutionary branch of the monkey, unless you let them breed together. But that doesn't work. They are too different. So a dog can only make its own path and branches using radiation, faulty copied DNA and reproducing with a different race, same for the fish and monkey. And a fruitfly... well... a fruitfly has way less complex genes than do dogs and monkeys. So radiation does not have such significant effects. A fly does not breed with other races. And thus the only significant way a fruitfly can change is through faulty copied DNA. Not a really fast process.


I can reason it in such a way that nothing is proven. The universe beginning has not been proven at all. The universe may be in a vicious cycle of expansion and shrinking, where the big bang is just a phase within this cycle. There, unproven. We just assume the most reasonable theory, and build from there. God is not more a reasonable theory than is evolution. Thus we choose evolution.


Nicely put I can settle with that. But why were you fiddling with the "how" in this whole post? Why not just be content that God exists, and that we're here for a reason, but the reason has yet to be found? And let science filter all the truths and lies... because like you said, science explains the "how".


I might be wrong on some points in this post, but I did my research as good as I ought necessary. I also once again state that I have much respect for religion, but I despise how believers start to fiddle and twist with the theories science presents.

Science is not based on laws at all its based on highly likely theories, and there is a difference and even if we are right about some theories, they aren't mutually exclusive to the idea of a "higher system" that we are not conscious of.

Nope, you're wrong, it ís based on laws, laws within the realm of our scientific knowledge. I already emphasized how science doesn't pretend to have absolute knowledge.

There's a good bunch of scientific laws that can be considered quite absolute, like the laws of physics (gravity and so on), considering the overwhelming amount of evidence.

Again, contrary to the belief in science, faith is belief despite the absence of proof.



I don't see any violation. After all, aren't we life? If we succeed making new life in a laboratory, we would still be producing life, whilst being life.

In fact, it's really not that far fetched to think that one day we will be able to create life. There are already countless of research projects going on about growing back limps and so on, very advanced biological research on the edge of sci-fi. By the time we've figured out how the actual code instructions work, we'd be building new life in no time.



Religion gives no answer to the "why" questions at all. For example, 'why' does God exist? 'Why' do we exist?

Don't give me that 'to serve God' crap for an answer here either as that's pretty much ridiculous. A philosophical concept being the reason behind a philosophical concept hardly makes sense, right?