Dinosaurs may be a tool of the devil's deception, but boy can they boogie

http://img150.imageshack.us/img150/2...0danceski1.gif

Faith is as you say, belief in the absence of evidence. You just have to flip the coin however. We have mountains of evidence which undermines religious doctrine. Yet many people of faith have a continue belief while in the presence of scientific evidence and therefore in spite of scientific evidence.

I don't want to bring this topic off-track, but I would like to respond to those who asked by stating that Christian theology requires that the Adam and Eve section of Genesis be true (though everything else could, I suppose, be figurative). The absolute dependence on the story and the concepts behind it are why Christians are - and should be - concerned and intellectually curious about it.

I might comment further on what else you've written, but I am studying for exams and don't have the time. I'd be careful with the last sentence. Consider Homo sapiens sapiens for instance. We are continually evolving even now. One of the interesting things is loss of wisdom teeth. Many people don't have their wisdom teeth naturally (I am one of them) and the percentage is increasing (talk to your dentist if you don't believe me). Our jaws are getting smaller, heads bigger and we don't need excess teeth that have long, outgrew their purpose. Another one has to do with ribs. Humans have 12 ribs. Chimpanzees have 13 ribs. 8% of the global population has 13 ribs, and it is a slowly decreasing percentage. Anyways, just thought I would share those two little tidbits. I am a biologist, so I can get into this thread in a big way if I find the time after exams.

*Edit* Guess I should add my two cents about Adam and Eve. Eve is a invention of the King James version of the Bible. The Geneva bible, and I assume the bible versions before it (never researched it further), contains a snake-headed woman who is almost pagan in concept (some have referred to her as the Christian Medusa). Also no reference to the devil 'snake'/apple scene in the Geneva bible either. The snake and Eve were added in the King James version of the bible due to the hostility people had at that time with concepts they considered pagan.

Those are all perfect examples of a loss of genetic information brought on by environmental changes. They can't be used as a basis for the spontaneous generation of new genetic information. As the need for wisdom teeth becomes less and less, and jaws get smaller and smaller due to a diet of softer food, they gradually just disappear.

I might also add that this is happening in just a few hundred years, far, far, FAR to short a time for any proposed macroevolutionist ideas to take place.

"*Edit* Guess I should add my two cents about Adam and Eve. Eve is a invention of the King James version of the Bible. The Geneva bible, and I assume the bible versions before it (never researched it further), contains a snake-headed woman who is almost pagan in concept (some have referred to her as the Christian Medusa). Also no reference to the devil 'snake'/apple scene in the Geneva bible either. The snake and Eve were added in the King James version of the bible due to the hostility people had at that time with concepts they considered pagan."

tomb, while I won't begin to criticize your other points, I'd really appreciate you deleting this. I'd hate to lose respect for you so quickly.

Didn't you know? vemp made us.

I'm moving this thread to Political Palace, as it's bound to become another debate between spiritualism and empyricism.

For the record I believe that evolution is part of a well laid-out plan.

But, by and large, arguing the origins of life is a moot point, at best. No living being was around then to present an accurate account, and the truth, no matter what it is, changes little about ourselves today. The only purpose for the argument's existence is so that one group can tell another they're wrong. Honestly, I don't care who's right, since it's not our past but our future that is of imminent concern.

This is why I like my own concept that God exists and that he/she/it allowed for evolution to exist as part of a natural process. Though we attest that we, mankind, were created in God's image, it's the height of both naivetee and vanity to presume that this refers purely to physical form. God created birds, insects and fish too; are they less worthy beings because they don't write books in testament to their own merit?

We have self-awareness. We are free to make choices. We have the ability to create our world around us. We learn; we pass these knowledges down through our offspring and the ages. We have the capacity for love, fear and all emotions in between, and through these experiences we grow and realize ourselves more fully. This is "being created in God's image". If Jesus ever walked among us, this is the message he surely intended to deliver, that we have such potential.

That's the process each species goes through as it realizes itself. That's what evolution is, and it can be as scientific or as divine as you individually choose. Why argue the semantics when it makes no difference in the ultimate outcome anyhow?

When you think about it, today's sciences were yesterday's faiths. Being right isn't as important as being understood.

i believe that we had to come from somewhere and i think that our existence is based on our predicessors

That's the way I see it.


This always reminds me of what some kid said with regard to FFVII: "What are the odds that of all the people on Gaia, the game focuses on Cloud and company, who just happen to save the world!"

If we were the unborn product of any of those inordinate number of failed or unrealized possibilities, we wouldn't be here. DUH. People tend to focus on the prayer that was answered and forget about the thousands that weren't. That is religion.

Is this a serious statement or are you just having fun with language? I have to admit I'm not sure how to respond and I'm not sure what a proper answer would be but that's my problem and not a problem of natural selection. It may very well be that there is a tiny gap in evolutionary theory which can't explain certain things (at present) about the origins of life but to fall back on, "therefore God" explains absolutely nothing.

I'm sure I've have read or heard Dawkins address this very issue. However at face value I just can't take this statement as a serious advancement to the argument when no explanation is given.

Small gap? I studied origin of life in my molecular evolution class and it's a gaping gorge the size of the grand canyon.

You have to have a lot of faith in capricious events if you believe that something like this can occur apart from supernatural intervention. Either that, or you really haven't studied the information in any great detail.

Jesus, it's not a one-shot deal.

You must have no concept of the shear magnitude of time and space if you believe something like this can't occur apart from supernatural intervention. Either that, or you really haven't studied probability.

Obviously the disposition that most people seem to have preset for themselves. While I also think the Adam and Eve story is metaphorical, I also have a bias to think that the Big Bang is too ludicrous to think that everything in the world just happened to form this way and we became aware of it. Then again, I like the neutral point brought up the best. We simply don't know what happened, so we shouldn't act like either, or even a combination is the absolute truth.

Isn't it pretty simple? I.D. is a political tool. It has to have a deity aspect, because otherwise it's impossible for there to be original intelligence without expanding into realms possibly beyond our comprehension. (not that it isn't absolutely impossible to understand, but I wouldn't be surprised if we never cared to)

None of this will matter anyway when the universe dies a heat death or cold death or entropy death or the Big Rip or...

No. I just believe that when examining the origin of life, time and space becomes limited to a very small window of opportunity through certain evidence. The half life of Ribose Sugar is one small example. (53min at 20 degrees celcius. Ribose sugar is required to make both RNA and DNA)

The issue I have with the Big Bang theory is one of deferred causality. The idea that the big bang had to come from somewhere. Something had to create it. Recall that matter is neither created nor destroyed.

Something coming from nothing without cause, much like life from nonlife seems like a convenient exception from nature's laws.



Devo. Why do scientists insist on an atheistic worldview when discussing their research? Neither can be proven or disproven through the scientific method. I personally see nothing wrong with discussing theism and atheism with children and letting them make up their own minds.

Honestly, I don't know that I can even debate on I.D. See, I don't live in this little bubble you people call the United States of America and as a result, I am detached from the political issues in that country. Honestly, in Canada, I.D. has never come up as a valid curriculum in any of our schools.


This is all I hope to contribute without getting dragged into a pointless debate for the hundredth time.

But the concept of an infinite god, who exists at all moments in time and took the time to create a world and listen to people's prayers... that's ok? You can't argue for rationality and then run around the asylum claiming to be Napoleon. Brady nailed it: ID is a tool.

ID, regardless of whether or not I believe in it, has no place in a science classroom. Science is a means by which we explain things through natural processes. ID, if true, can ultimately not be proven through science, which is why it's stupid to try and directly have a ID vs Evolution debate.

It's cool and fine to debate the scientific merits of different parts of each theory, but ultimately, ID consists of supernatural & natural elements, while evolution consists only of natural elements. Science is not built to explain supernatural happenings.

Also, playing Devil's advocate, why did something have to create the big bang? If God was always there, why couldn't a hunk of matter just have always been there?

Evolution is the currently scientifically accepted method for the means by which we got where we are today, regardless of whether or not we can scientifically explain all aspects of it. Those things I believe need to be pointed out (as Devo's teacher did), so we don't churn out students convinced that Evolution is the ultimate proven answer, but a possible answer.

I just don't think we have any right to teach supernatural means to creation when something like that can't be held as science. ID isn't a science, it's a religious platform with a bit of science mixed into the fray.

It's times like these I feel good about transhumanism. Only a little, though.

Also I might as well throw my view into this: I personally adhere to the probability eventuality. Since time cannot exist, it is therefore possible that all probabilities exist at some point. The universe could have expanded contracted, dissappeared and reappeared the amount of times which we haven't even discovered the number for yet, before we were created.

Hell, probability also stipulates it's possible that Earth is the only planet in the universe which has born life. We could be the only carbon-based lifeforms in existence. Wouldn't that be something?

Using an estimation of the amount of Earth-like planets as evidence isn't very scientific, though. We can't really know unless they're confirmed to be earth-like.

If we do discover other forms of life, I hope it's delicious.

I vote this as the single best thought/point brought up in this thread :D .

Huh? I need more characters for this post to go through, but huh?