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:

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"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."

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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.