Going Crazy

My major issue with Creationism is that it limits god. According to Creationism god can only create in one way and that is the way presented in Genesis.

"to treat the Bible as though it were common history is to degrade its eternal meaning." - Bones, Bibles, and Creation by Dr. Robert T. Bakker, one of the world's leading palaentologists and a bible believing Pentacostal preacher.

As there is nothing anyone can verify and thus actually know to be correct about gods (because every single holy book demands to be taken and believed on faith and faith alone), then science is unable to make any comment about them at all. Because science can only ever investigate things with demonstrable evidence can be tested or measured.

 

Adam and Eve were created with a totally free will, as per the original design. Once they fell into sin, the rest of us were doomed to be born into a sinful world, no longer truly free but enslaved to sin.

 

Here's a scary thought, If Adam & Eve were the first people on the planet and they had children, surely that means in some way we are all related to Justin Bieber? We are all inbred. Which is of course is deemed "Not so good" by the bible. God basically set us up to fail I suppose.

 

Even scarier, we are all related to you...

 

It is not random chance, it's mutations causing changes, and changes that give an advantage being more easily passed down to later generations, which later cumulate to the formation of newer species.

Nor can it prove it. That's "argumentum ad ignorantiam" right there.

We have no evidence of this thing called spirit. We have sentience, but a person's feelings can be manipulated simply by injecting hormones, or opening up the brain and pushing stuff around.

Also, we do not have any evidence that our universe was "built".

A long list of philosophers would disagree with you.

Since you mean the Christian God, add in like 2/3+ of the world too.

Yet he leaves no evidence of his existance, he does not affect things, he does not change anything on earth.

I do not form my beliefs on a logical fallacy. There is no evidence that your god exists, and your holy book is contradictive. My response to you is the same with someone who claims they have an invisible awesome friend called Steve who designed everything in the garage.

Yet your blind faith turns your face from scientific truth?

I can tolerate people who at least say, for example, "Oh, but God makes things go through evolution", but denying scientific findings altogether just to not damage your faith is sheer bigotry.

Re-read my response to Grakelin. It should educate you a little about modern biology.

"We do not have spirit, we have sentience, by biological terms. What we think and feel is affected by what is in our body, which can be changed by worldly effects by chemicals or electronic pulses. With harm to said parts and receptors, how we think and feel change.

Thus, we do not possess a spirit that is independently placed in our body. We have sentience as part of our bodily functions."

A fine enough rebuttal? Now respond by saying how we could have spirits that control our bodies and live through our lives while this stands ground.

 

Given that one of the smaller genomes on the planet is the human genome and that out of all the DNA in the genome less than 10 percent of it is the unique part that is you, this is a fairly accurate description.

His name is Harvey. He's a very big bunny.

 

Of course nothing in our genomes was obviously tampered with. We live in a universe defined by a set of already established rules. We wouldn't be able to tell off hand if a deity had written our genomes for us.

But there is evidence to support Intelligent Design, which is no more or less circumstanstial than any of our other theories. Chaos theory indicates this. The way that biological organisms will group up and form the exact same patterns over and over again suggests this.

The job of a scientist isn't to throw out ideas simply because there's no hard proof of them. The job of a scientist is to figure out the truth. Being stubborn that your idea is the correct idea is silly, and it made us all think we were in the centre of a series of crystal spheres for hundreds of years.

 

I will confess, my understanding of biology and the theory of evolution is limited; partly by lack of education, partly by lack of interest in learning about a theory I believe to be founded on fallacy. Science has undoubtedly given us more thorough understanding of the laws of nature, but it will never be able to answer certain questions because the answers are not in the physical realm. Spirit cannot be defined by a scientific equation because it exists apart from the natural order, and while we can't see it with our eyes or instruments, we can see its effect on the world around us, just as we can see the effect of the wind in the trees. If you believe in the wind you will see the wind moving the trees. If you don't believe in the wind, you will only see trees randomly thrashing about. No matter how carefully you dissect a tree, no matter how closely you look at the microscopic particles that make it up, you will never get any closer to understanding what makes them move.

 

So it's not possible to establish it as truth but people believe anyways?

I have this gut feeling that this does not support your case.

The only thing they point to is the Law of Entrophy. Unless you're going at the "look at the stars, the sky, the trees, only God could make it happen, right?", route. That would just make you look funny.

Evolution is observed with experiment. What you describe is what the religious people are doing.

Huh? I am stubborn because the opposing side is yet to show any evidence to their hypothesis. Science allows for ideas only when they are viable, testable/observable ideas.

Nice job trying to play the "theory" card. The Electro-magnetic Field Theory and Theory of Gravity are just theories too, so I guess I should dump my computer and start flying to stick it to those scientists.

Quantum Physics are going that way.

Spirit cannot be defined as an equation. That is because it is not measurable in any form. And I don't like the way your post is going...

...because I thought the pressure difference between hot air and cold air in localized areas made the air move from one direction to the other, resulting in the phenomenon we call winds. Damn, I never thought "scientists" could be so wrong. =\

 

You miss the point of the analogy. The wind represents spirit, the tree represents the physical world. Examining the makeup of a tree will never give you an understanding of the wind, just as examining the physical world will never give you an understanding of spirit. Either you're a bit slow on the uptake or you're being a dick, which is it?

 

None.

Your analogy is bad because you can actually scientifically analyze the wind.

You can analyze one's mind, but that gives no indication if one is going to go to a very hot place after death.

 

False hope is better than no hope: A standard psychological survival model...the 'feeling' of understanding or knowing implies a degree of control over one's environment adjusted by the observer to obtain that feeling of dominance through 'knowing' something. It has its uses in combat, however not in the field of intellectual progression, which requires equal submission for maximum efficiency.

To those ends, the only thing you gentlemen have definitely established with ample evidence is that you are unwilling to budge on your positions and you are off-topic.


I thought we were trying to discuss Neanderthals with Grossenschwamm as a derivative of his recovery? De-rail the topic much?

 

Considering how the Universe (or even more so - Earth, or even more so - humanity) looks and works, Hеllbokos would actually be on top of my 'potential God & Creator Of All That Exists™ walking on Earth' list.

 

Nahh, unlike the real God, I'm actually quite self deprecating. Notice, God never takes the piss out of HIMSELF for the good of the group...

 

You don't understand what theory means in a scientific context do you? Theory is an educated hypothesis based on measurable and observable facts that can be repeatable via experimentation. Yes, it is called evolutionary theory. But you accept almost every other theory in science. Atomic Theory (atoms exist you can see them in microscopes and you've even probably done experiments with them in high school/college), Gravitational Theory (you know...gravity? That handy little thing where what goes up must come down and all that fun force that keeps you from floating into space), and many others.

Each individual is free to believe what they wish. If somebody chooses not to believe in the wind they are free to live in their fantasy world. However, they are not free to escape the consequences of their actions that reality will impose. If one chooses not to believe in the wind it will continue to exist and may even destroy your house, car, or even take one's life by breaking a tree branch. Just as one is free to ignore evolution, but the world around you will continue to evolve regardless of one's willful ignorance of denying evolution exists.



As for Chaos Theory, that's actually a mathematical theory, not scientific one.

EDIT: Seems Mest beat me to some of my points...

 

Mesteut: You're not putting much effort into this. I say that blindly declaring there is no God based on circumstantial evidence is a fallacy, and you reply by saying that declaring there is a God based on circumstantial evidence is a fallacy. Maybe your mistake is believing that I'm against science. I'm not. Japes is a member of the Christian Right, but I am not. Don't get us confused, please.

I'm arguing a blend between science and faith. If science is meant to answer our questions about the mechanics of our universe, then it only stands to reason that if a deity exists, we are studying their work. Evolution does not disprove God anymore than a loaf of bread disproves the farmer. You can say 'You have no proof that a God exists!' all you like, but the fact is, that we have no proof that a God doesn't exist. Declaring that you wholeheartedly believe there is no deity is formed every bit out of faith as a declaration that you wholeheartedly believe there is. The scientific approach is Agnotiscism, not Atheism. Maybe one day somebody will prove that a deity can't ever exist, and Atheism will turn to be correct. As it stands, it is only slightly more likely to be true than other religions because there is no mythology surrounding it.

 

I always find it amusing how some people can believe that an all powerful creator of universes exists because an ancient book full of contradictions says so, but trusting a scientifically proven theory is a big no-no for them.

Since when do atheists believe in anything?

Since when does certainty fuelled by unquestioning faith qualify as confirmation of any sort?

Any argument which can be at the same time used to prove the existence of magic is fine with me. It would be selfish for me to have all of the fun, though, so seriously anyone, go ahead and replace the underlined words with "magic" yourself.

Exaggerating a bit there, you are.

We have no proof that Smurfs don't exist too, you know. We must remember, though, that the scientific approach is not asmurfism, as in saying that Smurfs do not exist, but agnosmurfism - saying that we aren't able to state whether Smurfs exist or not.

 

Not exactly. Assuming human is just lumped in with the rest of mammals, over 1/3 of that chart has genomes larger than the human genome (and approximately 50% of all species of flowering plants have a genome larger than human), it's actually a fairly valid statement. And if I remember correctly humans are on the low end for genome size amongst all mammals. Also a unicellular organism, the amoeba, has a genome between 100 and 250 times the size of a human's and with no junk DNA on top of it. Humans are largely junk.

Agreed. Abiogenesis has been able to able to recreate and spawn in labratories adenine, guanine, etc. to simulate how life began from chemical reactions, but hasn't (to my knowledge - am more than willing to be proven wrong) figured out how those chemicals came into being. They just suddenly appeared out of nothing with the big bang? Something out of nothing is the very foundation of creationism. Until somebody can adequately explain how the hell hydrogen, oxygen, etc. just began existing, I'm willing to believe that gods created the elements.

 

I prefer to be agnostic, though if I had to lean towards a religion it would be Roman catholic simply because I agree with the ideals of being friendly etc that they aim towards in this modern era. Still I'd prefer to die believing and be proven wrong than to not believe in anything and be proven wrong at the gates of hell.