Topic: 22 Messages From Creationists To People Who Believe In Evolution - page 2. (Read 18771 times)

It's also just another theory. A theory can't prove another one.

Because we can't time travel to the past, whatever hypothesis about it we have it's called a "theory". There will never be empirical evidence about such things! Archeology isn't an exact science and sometimes trying to guess what that means out of few specimens may lead to wrong interpretations; imagine an archaeologist 10.000 years in the future digging out the remains of a bachelor party, we will write that we live like that... at least until some more specimens of our age can be found.

But bottom line: The difference between Darwin and religion, is that while Darwin theories are supported by evidence and remains from the past we have so far, religious theories are plain bullshit suitable only for 3 year old kids as stories. Or in short: Darwin theories have over 75% of chances to be right, religious ones 0%

Wow there's people on the forum who consider evolution a theory!

Darwin killed God years ago

I just discovered one in your digestive tract. Your appendix.

What is an 'in-progress' organ?  I guess you mean some organ which does not work but is getting there?  If so, "you are doing it wrong."  Many/most creatures have vestigial structures and organs which are no longer important for the life way's they've evolved to exploit, and other organs and structures which are undergoing relatively rapid development to better exploit said.

The 'theory' of evolution is just that.  A theory.

It's a fact that creatures evolve from one form to another and eventually become differentiated as separate species over time.  A depressingly large contingent of people consider this not true, but that's mainly because the human brain is evolved to accept mysticism and magic as a viable explanation for things.  It simplifies things so one need not waste time thinking about stuff which are not necessary for one's immediate survival, and more critically it makes management easier for the subset of people who will become leaders.  Groups of humans who can be more easily lead will be more successful overall when we run into other groups and compete for resources and what-not so we've 'evolved' to be as we are in this way.  (That's my hypothesis anyway.)

The 'theory' part of the 'theory of evolution' consists of various peoples explanations about the details of how and why evolution happens.  Much like the 'theory of operation' of a gasoline engine.  There is really no debate about how a gas engine works generally, but there is a lot of room to study the intricacies of thermodynamics and apply them to combustion chamber design for instance.

http://www.albatrus.org/english/theology/creation/biblical_age_earth.htm   

Archaeology didn't prove anything since we never discovered any species with "in-progress" organs. Absence of these proofs in archaeology annoys me terribly and is also the reason why Darwin's theory is still a theory and should be considered as such.

David Berlinski is wrong on all points.

Evolution is clearly present, if you want hands on proof, become an archaeologist, or go to a museum. Anyone who denies evolution is completely delusional...

Actually creatures with anatomical distinctions of modern birds were contemporaries of dinosaurs for tens of millions of years before the major extinction event.

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/evograms_06

Mammals had a giant overlap as well as I recall.  It's a reasonable hypothesis that a somewhat effective endothermic metabolism helped both groups survive the event.

But bitcoin has it's own genesis block

But, how do you explain this flat earth, without believing in the all seeing bearded guy living just above the tent cover called the clouds? ( or the dome as it is referred to, that covers the flat earth )

How did I miss this epic debate? 

The essential issue here is that structure and formations of thought between people from science and religious background is so different.  This requires extremely precise wording which is difficult if not impossible in rapid or verbal debate. 

1. For example, let's address fact vs. theory and the unexplained in science:

There are no general facts in observational science.  There are of course specific facts like "I found this rock at GPS coordinates XXX".  But for ideas like evolution or global warming there is only theory.  However some theories are supported by so many diverse and unrelated observations that scientists name them "fact" as a kind of verbal shorthand.  However, that does not mean that these fact-like theories will never be changed.

Actually, theories like the Newtonian equations and evolution are often changed.  BUT in a way that is hard for many religious people to understand the theories were not previously wrong.  What happens is that the theory is found to be imprecise or apply to a narrower environment then previously supposed.  For example Newton's theory of motion turned out to be not perfectly precise at slow speeds and to be so imprecise as to become inapplicable as speed approaches that of light.  And as we all know, it was superseded by relativity.  But for all cases that Newton could see and to his measurement accuracy, his theory was correct.   

Also, mathematically if you take the equations of relativity, and assume that the maximum speed is MUCH slower than light, certain terms become 0.  What's left ARE Newton's equations!  This is probably the ultimate demonstration of my point...

Similarly with evolution.  Punctuated Equilibrium is evolution with more detail.  Also, today biochemistry researchers are discovering that the cell has clever chemical ways of mixing and recombining mutations to make them less lethal.  Additionally, the cell is structured so that mutations occur more often in stressed environments (using a mechanism that is not really understood).  So maybe there is some "design" in evolution after all...

There are some facts in mathematics or other abstract disciplines.  A better term would be "proofs".  For example, if you take as given a whole host of assumptions we call the "Cartesian" coordinate system (i.e graph paper) then Pythagorean's Theorem is true (a fact).  But if the REAL UNIVERSE is NOT Cartesian then it is not true in this the real universe (and right now the shape of the universe is a matter of great debate).  So you see the entire fact must be written "If this and this and this, THEN this is true".  But lazy people (and people who want to argue with science) shorten it to "...this is true".

2. The unexplained

It is true that there is the unexplained in science.  Science does not claim to have all the answers.  Often religious people make the mistake of pushing "answers" onto science that scientists did not really say (they skip the "if this and this and this" part of the fact).  Scientists who say science has proven that there is no God are making the same assertions-without-proof as religious people.  A better statement would be:

Historically, many phenomena that were attributed to the divine have now been explained by science.  However, some questions (and many new questions) remain unexplained.  These questions may never be explained by science and we may even discover God in them.  However, the existence of questions not explained by science does not prove that there is God because these questions may be scientifically answered in the future.

3. Science allows for God

Einstein had a famous anti-Quantum Mechanics quote "God does not play dice" because quantum mechanics is all about probabilities.  For example, there is a small probability that atoms "tunnel" through a classically-impenetrable wall of other atoms and can magically appear on the other side.  In theory at least there's actually an infinitesimally tiny chance of any particular miracle (say trillions of water molecules jumping to the side, or light deflecting in a manner to form a figure) happening.  So miracles actually CAN happen without breaking the laws of physics!  Of course, the existence of this possibility does not mean that

Additionally, from an abstract direction, Godel's Incompleteness Theorem basically shows that any sufficiently complex logical system can posit a question that is obviously true but cannot be proven from within the system.


4. Additional fun:

Researchers are evolving algorithms in hardware: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolvable_hardware
I read some of the early research.  One fascinating result is that the circuits that evolved tended to create small groups of high-feedback logic.  The groups were then loosely interconnected.  This result is very similar to what people see in cellular chemistry, genetics, and the structure of the brain.  However it is VERY different from a computer program or human-made electrical design which tends to be very linear -- like the "TODO" list you might make for yourself before going on vacation.


Congrats and thanks to anyone who slogged thru all this!  Mostly I wrote it for myself :-)  After all, I will likely never meet you!

I used to be a huge Christian, argueing on boards on the time etc etc.

Now, I'm not part of any religion. I believe that their is a "all powerful being/thing", and the only thing we need to do, is love.

Love is the only thing in the world there could never be enough of, I'm not talking about sex, I'm talking about kindess, compassion, all the things that form/show love to one another.

Religion is guided by fools, half those priests are pedofiles, even the jewish people are...it's too corrupted, after all they are human and definitely not "chosen" by god.


I say, forget religion, Have love. Let love be your guide. If you are in a religion out of love, I respect and honor that.

You're wasting your time, dude. Just read the rest of the thread. Logic or rationale doesn't hold any weight with the brainwashed and closeminded.

Even Scientology has better shtick.   

I haven't fully read Revelation, but I think I know the gist of it. It's to do with the 7 angels with 7 plagues, and an apocalyptic scenario where Satan is destroyed, along with everyone who doesn't have faith in God. Something like that, right?

Shame he hasn't done anything about it yet, your God seems to be taking his time.

Anyway, I don't see how you can just quote the Bible as evidence for anything at all, seeing as it was written by hundreds of people a mere couple of thousand years ago.

What if I believe in the religious writings of Ancient Egypt: According to the Book of the Dead, when we die we are transported to Osiris's realm of the "Duat", where we must pass a series of brutal tests involving supernatural monsters, before we are led into the final test by Anubis. Here, our hearts are weighed against the goddess Maat (the heart represents the weight of our sins). If the scales balance, we get to go into the afterlife. But if not, then our heart is devoured by another deity, Ammit, ending our journey into the afterlife prematurely. 

Now that sounds ridiculous, right? But this Egyptian text (one of the more modern texts incidentally) is well over 3000 years old. The book of Revelation is less than 2000 years old. Why would you not believe the older text, and put so much faith in the newer one?

Answer: It's because you were taught that the Bible was truth when you were younger, but were not taught that the Egyptian writings were the truth. (correct me if I'm wrong)

Neither have any evidence that they are true or false, so please stop quoting one text (the bible) as truth when anyone could quote any other religious text as an alternate truth.

Also, re: Noah's Ark (and the Bible in general tbh), how do you explain that there absolutely no references to any creatures/entities that weren't known of at the time (eg subatomic particles/viruses/bacteria/colossal squid/dinosaurs/megalodons/pluto/asteroid belt/exoplanets/galaxies/white dwarves/radiation etc. etc.). It seems that there would be at least the tiniest thing in there somewhere, if everything had been created.

Bit of a coincidence that everything that god created was already known about by humans, no?

LOL! Revelations, I wonder what drug whoever wrote that was under! Magic mushrooms, maybe.

God doesn't exist without Satan. Who invented one, invented the other. They are not real creatures of any sort, they are representations of Good and Evil, the eternal struggle you can observe on most anything. The best example can be the air pressure, your body just keeps its shape because your internal pressure (we can call it Good) matches the external atmospheric pressure (we can call it Evil), but if you get into an environment where "Good" or "Evil" prevails over the other your body will either be crushed or explodes.

But even between "Good and Evil" we have relativity. What is "Good" for one can be "Evil" for the other. How to manage that? 

That's a total misunderstanding of what science is! And that's the major issue while talking with religious folks, they think "science is a religion" so we can lower it to our grounds and discuss it over insanity of this or those in the way we discuss between Christians, Jews and Muslims.

Too bad... it doesn't work like that! Sorry to disappoint you.

Science is NOT a belief system, nobody "believes in Darwin", just his theories have way more ground than the bullshit you can find at the Bible, Torah or Quran, but it does NOT make Darwin God or even "right". If you can provide a better theory, and by better I mean better constructed and supported by evidence - not Godly bullshit - his theories will drop to second line and eventually will be ditched.
So that's all that resumes science: Science is Science, nothing to believe all to discuss.

As footnote, before anyone goes that way: "Scientology" has absolutely nothing to do with science. That thing is just yet another religious bullshit branch.

Belief in God is totally a choice we have. 

But as for you saying, "Nobody uses science to 'not want to believe in God'  here is an example to consider:

Professor Richard Lewontin, a geneticist (and self-proclaimed Marxist), is a renowned champion of neo-Darwinism, and certainly one of the world’s leaders in evolutionary biology. He wrote this very revealing comment (the italics were in the original). It illustrates the implicit philosophical bias against Genesis creation—regardless of whether or not the facts support it.
‘We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.’

Um.  Have you read the book of Revelation?  Satan will get his due reward!  Also, God will stop suffering.  He will "Wipe the tears from our eyes" the Bible says and "He will make a new heaven and and  new earth."  So there will be a "new planet" if you will where we will live in peace.