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nfq wrote:
um... where did i say that anecdotal evidence is evidence? read what i wrote more carefully. i didn't say anything about evidence in the entire post. i don't even know if astral projection is real because i haven't had one yet. it's just something i believe in.
At least you have the courage to admit that you believe in things without any kind of evidence.
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GMan wrote:
nfq wrote:
because they don't actually have evidence, they just say they have, so it's anecdotal evidence.
Except the evidence is readily available for anyone else to confirm. Just try, oh I don't know, searching?
Trying to convince someone that the theory of evolution is a scientifically valid theory with valid evidence (and here I'm using the word "theory" as it is used in science, not as used in common parlance where it is usually used to mean something like "blind guess", or more technically "conjecture", which has nothing to do with the scientific definition of the word) is a futile endeavor if that someone is convinced otherwise. Opposition to the evolution theory is a dogma, and dogmas cannot be refuted. One has to first understand the scientific foundation onto which the theory of evolution is based on before one can accept the evidence supporting it. Most people who oppose the theory do not understand this foundation, and usually not even how science works. They have a completely made-up misconception of what science is, how it works, and how the scientific community works.
nfq
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GMan wrote:
Except the evidence is readily available for anyone else to confirm.
well, there is evidence for intelligent design too. just search on youtube or google if you don't believe me.
Just try, oh I don't know, searching?
there are similarities between humans and apes, and speciation occurs, but it's not evidence that a single celled organism can turn into a human over billions of years.
I guess I could throw in an example: We cannot drink salt water, yet most of Earths water is salt water. There is no evidence to believe it was ever otherwise.
according to the biblical flood Theory, there was no salt water in the beginning, because otherwise some salt water animals wouldn't have survived the flood.
On a side note, I thought this was interesting: "> The cause of human unhappiness is not the world around them" Do floods, hurricanes, and earthquakes ring a bell?
if you could change the world so that there are no floods, hurricanes and earthquakes, would you do it? would that kind of world work?
Warp wrote:
Opposition to the evolution theory is a dogma, and dogmas cannot be refuted.
try to refute this video i made: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xEkJpvjP1c&feature=channel_page the theory of evolution is dogma. if the theory of evolution is a scientific theory, then intelligent design and creationism also qualify as scientific theories.
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nfq wrote:
Warp wrote:
Opposition to the evolution theory is a dogma, and dogmas cannot be refuted.
try to refute this video i made: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xEkJpvjP1c&feature=channel_page the theory of evolution is dogma. if the theory of evolution is a scientific theory, then intelligent design and creationism also qualify as scientific theories.
Anti-biotic resistant strains of Streptococcus, The transition of Avian Flu to Humans. HIV's ability to be resistant to any new drug. These are observable evolutions in our lifetime.
nfq wrote:
there are similarities between humans and apes, and speciation occurs, but it's not evidence that a single celled organism can turn into a human over billions of years.
This is often misrepresented as the theory of evolution. This is NOT the theory of evolution. THIS IS Granted, I know I can't change your mind. To you the Bible is an infallible source of information.
Exodus 21:7-11 wrote:
When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are. If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again.
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
nfq
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DarkKobold wrote:
These are observable evolutions in our lifetime.
moar like microevolutions... i used to believe in evolution once too. it's because we were indoctrinated into believing that in school because it was taught as if it was a fact, so now most people still believe it's a fact, even though it's not. i do believe in evolution, but my evolution theory is different from darwin's... i believe we will evolve into angels... but just like darwin's theory, it takes millions of years to happen, so you can't disprove it.
Granted, I know I can't change your mind. To you the Bible is an infallible source of information.
lol, no, you have misunderstood me. i don't even believe in god. i'm an atheist. the bible has a lot of things i don't agree with, but it also has a lot of good and funny things, like the global flood which i believe in.
Exodus 21:7-11 wrote:
When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are. If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again.
the devil wrote this part of the bible to test the faith of the believers. or maybe things were different back then. it's a really old book, so we shouldn't take everything it says so literally.
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nfq wrote:
i believe we will evolve into angels and gods... [...] lol, no, you have misunderstood me. i don't even believe in god. i'm an atheist.
You seem to be contradicting yourself... but that could just be me. (The Italic part was edited out of the original post.)
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nfq wrote:
well, there is evidence for intelligent design too. just search on youtube or google if you don't believe me.
Yeah, because YouTube and Google are such incredibly reliable sources of peer-reviewed information. But more seriously: what evidence? Scientists have pestered IDers for testable predictions so that ID could be tested, but they failed to generate any such predictions. Moreover, the central points of ID (irreducible/specified complexity, "explanatory filter") has been shown to be useless for such purposes in any of the formulations that have been presented so far. Here are a few relevant articles (and series of articles): 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution, An Index to Creationist Claims, Irreducible Complexity and Michael Behe and TalkDesign articles. Not that I think you will read any of them or that they will change your mind.
nfq wrote:
if you could change the world so that there are no floods, hurricanes and earthquakes, would you do it? would that kind of world work?
If I were an omnipotent being that created the universe, I could make such a world work by altering its fundamental workings so it could work. That is an unequivocal "yes" on both questions.
nfq wrote:
try to refute this video i made: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xEkJpvjP1c&feature=channel_page
That is trivial. I will start by stating that I am a physicist, just so you know where I am coming from. For starters: dropping an object and seeing it fall is not a test of the theory of gravity; you are observing the fact of gravity (i.e., that things fall if you drop them). That is a critical distinction. While the fact of gravity, and the equations describing it, must be accounted for in any theory of gravity, stating that you "observe" the theory of gravity when you drop an object is false. Since Newton, all theories of gravity (basically, Newton's Universal Gravitation and Einstein's General Relativity, but see below) assert that (1) the motion of celestial bodies and the aforementioned fact of gravity have the same underlying cause, gravity. In modern parlance, (2) everything creates gravitational fields and (3) everything reacts the same way to such fields. (1), (2) and (3), plus a set of equations stating the precise form of the generated gravitational field, are the essence of Universal Gravitation. To say that you "observe" any of them when you drop an object is ridiculous; but from experiments and from numerical computations on the solar system, we know that they give a very accurate description of reality. But it does not end there: Einstein went further and stated that gravitational fields are the curvature of space-time (and added equations for how it happens). This has the consequences of causing time to flow differently depending on where you are on a gravitational field, as well as altering distances; it also means that light is affected by gravitational fields. Saying that you "observe" this when you drop an object is a lie. But we know from experiments and from numerical computations on the solar system that this indeed happens; as a matter of fact, the GPS system would not work without it. This completes the demonstration that the gravitational part of the analogy is completely wrong. Evolution is similar in that you have the fact of evolution (that populations change over time) and the theory of evolution (that random mutations create variation, natural selection, genetic drift, gene flow, etc., add information from the environment by eliminating deleterious mutations, eventually causing speciation, biodiversity and so on). You can observe the fact of evolution ("microevolution", as creationists say, as well as speciations; a famous example if the Darwin finch), like you can observe the fact of gravity; but you need to gather evidence attempting to prove/disprove any given prediction of the theory of evolution so you can "see" it -- as it is the case with the theory of gravity. That the theory of evolution gives testable predictions can be seen with even a cursory glance of the relevant literature: biologists make predictions based on the theory of evolution and then test them, much like physicists do with the theory of gravity. Re: theories of gravity: there were a lot of attempts of formulating theories of gravity between Newton's and Einstein's, and after Einstein's. But they either failed to model reality that well (so they are not theories) or are currently ranked by how closely they predict the same things as Einstein's theory when it is known to be correct (making them alternative theories that can't yet be discarded because there isn't enough evidence to tell which one better models reality).
nfq wrote:
like the global flood which i believe in.
And which is completely debunked by geology...
nfq wrote:
i don't even believe in god. i'm an atheist.[...] the devil wrote this part of the bible
That is contradictory; being an atheist means you shouldn't believe in a "devil" anymore than in a "god". And not that it helps: if any part of the bible is written by the devil, you can't guarantee that any other part was not also written by the devil, which means you can't trust any of it.
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I find it rather amusing that the only people who claim there is no evidence for macroevolution (which is in itself a term invented by creationists, not by scientists) and no transitional species are people who oppose evolution as a matter of principle. There are no scientists who say "granted, there is no evidence for macroevolution, nor are there any transitional species, but I still believe the theory of evolution to be correct". Thus what the opposition is basically claiming is that all scientists are lying. That the hundreds of thousands (if not even millions) of scientists in the entire world who consider the theory of evolution to be correct, are all lying when they claim to have real, tangible evidence. This is, at its core, a conspiracy theory. While opposers might not state it directly, they are basically saying that all the hundreds of thousands of scientists around the world are in a huge conspiracy to lie to the world and to deny the truth (ie. that there really is no evidence nor transitional species). Of course that's not how science works. Science doubts, tests and verifies every claim. Everything is tested, re-tested, and re-re-tested to death. Everything is peer-reviewed. It's a physical impossibility to pass a lie to science and make all scientists either believe in it or agree to spread the lie further. That's not how science and the scientific community works. It's a physical impossibility. You cannot make hundreds of thousands of people of different cultures, religions and ethical backgrounds to agree to spread the same lie. It's impossible. But that's what the opposers are claiming.
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Warp wrote:
Thus what the opposition is basically claiming is that all scientists are lying.
Aye. It reminds me of the Who is lying chart about the Moon Hoax. Particularly when you factor in the fact that they do not have a beef just with evolution, but with geology in general, physics (cosmology and dating methods in particular), etc.
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marzojr wrote:
Particularly when you factor in the fact that they do not have a beef just with evolution, but with geology in general, physics (cosmology and dating methods in particular), etc.
Many creationists equate evolution with the origin of life, and some even go so far as to bunch it with the origin of the entire universe. A very typical argument against evolution is that "there must have been a creator". The evolution theory is in no way contradictory with the notion that there has been a sentient creator, yet most creationists make it sound like it was. They also make it sound like the sole motivation for coming up with the theory of evolution was to explain the universe without a creator (and thus the theory is artificial, contrived and created against evidence). The irony is that numerous evolutionary scientists are bible-believing christians themselves. I assume that the young earth creationists will say they are heretics.
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Bisqwit wrote:
However, the first five books of the Bible ― whose validity as an accurate historical document (at least after Abraham, and so also after Noah) seems to be strongly supported by the archeologic and geologic evidence shown in that film and the book ― comprise almost the entire religion of Judaism, and by extension, Christianity as well (*), so if such conclusion was drawn, it is a relatively minor assumption compared to the main topic.
So, if I take an encyclopedia and insert a few chapters and references to the Great Ironing Board God Helepetemeth, is it worth believing in this deity and any commandments inserted by me? The encyclopedia's validity as a historical document is strongly supported by archeologic and geologic evidence. Or is it only worth believing the bits that are directly supported by evidence, and not, say, 100% of the statements made in the book?
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marzojr wrote:
Here are a few relevant articles (and series of articles): 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution, An Index to Creationist Claims, Irreducible Complexity and Michael Behe and TalkDesign articles.
http://www.trueorigin.org/#to
Warp wrote:
macroevolution (which is in itself a term invented by creationists, not by scientists)
wikipedia says that it was invented by a scientist (but scientists can be creationists too): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macroevolution#Origin_of_the_term
While opposers might not state it directly, they are basically saying that all the hundreds of thousands of scientists around the world are in a huge conspiracy to lie to the world and to deny the truth (ie. that there really is no evidence nor transitional species).
according to people like kent hovind, who take the bible very literally, the reason they are lying is because they want to follow their sin more than the bible, so they want to imagine that they are just animals (apes) who were created by a natural process without any intervention by god, and that they don't have to be judged for the things they have done.
It's a physical impossibility to pass a lie to science and make all scientists either believe in it or agree to spread the lie further.
i doubt it would be an impossibility. scientists are not infallible. they are just humans.
Many creationists equate evolution with the origin of life, and some even go so far as to bunch it with the origin of the entire universe.
yeah... big bang is the cosmic theory of evolution: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_evolution evolution in a nut shell: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ia7kR8RtE2g
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nfq wrote:
according to people like kent hovind, who take the bible very literally, the reason they are lying is because they want to follow their sin more than the bible, so they want to imagine that they are just animals (apes) who were created by a natural process without any intervention by god, and that they don't have to be judged for the things they have done.
Yes, that explanation sounds a lot more plausible than all scientist agreeing on the subject being the result of extensive peer reviewing and testing.
It's a physical impossibility to pass a lie to science and make all scientists either believe in it or agree to spread the lie further.
i doubt it would be an impossibility. scientists are not infallible. they are just humans.
That's why science is never on the hands of just one or a few people. That's why everything must be peer-reviewed and tested before it becomes accepted by the scientific community as a whole. One person can make a mistake, or even try to deliberately create a hoax, but that won't pass extensive scrutiny by the scientific community. Scientists will always raise objections and questions if they see problems. That's how the scientific mind works: It doesn't accept anything without scrutiny, even if that something would support one's own views. While certainly some scientists will be eager to accept seemingly positive evidence without question, not all of them do.
Many creationists equate evolution with the origin of life, and some even go so far as to bunch it with the origin of the entire universe.
yeah... big bang is the cosmic theory of evolution: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_evolution
That's just playing with words. The theory of evolution has nothing to do with cosmological things.
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nfq wrote:
http://www.trueorigin.org/#to
I was already familiar with that website, being one of those I found a few years back when I was looking into evolution (funnily enough, creationists have been helpful to science in some regards). The reason I didn't mention it is because it is factually incorrect; it oversimplifies and misstates scientific positions and knowledge, and then attacks the resulting strawman; it uses and reuses known discredited claims, painting them with new colors and hoping nobody will notice -- and even pro-creationist bastions such as Answers in Genesis, Creation Ministries International and Creation Wiki disavow the arguments used in TrueOrigins. Some of the claims have been discredited for years, and on the "black lists" mentioned for years before the argument was used in a TrueOrigin article was written. But they still wrote and posted the articles nevertheless. Moreover, the integrity and honesty (or the lack or either, thereof) of the TrueOrigin folks can be seen directly by the way they creatively edit FAQ questions supposedly taken verbatim.
nfq wrote:
i doubt it would be an impossibility. scientists are not infallible. they are just humans.
It is exactly because they are just humans that it is impossible. Consider that scientists are not only encouraged to be skeptical of claims of others (including other scientists), but actually get famous for proving other scientists wrong. Factor in that you have scientists of all countries, and from all ethnic and religious backgrounds. Consider that many of them would oppose anything said by US scientists just because they are american, and would jump at any and all chances of proving them wrong. Result: persistent, systemic lies in science are impossible. Certainly not spanning over 150 years. In creationism, on the other hand, they are possible: in particular, the idea that "evolution is on the verge of collapse" has been around for almost as long as evolution itself. And it is no more true now than it was 150 years ago.
nfq wrote:
evolution in a strawman: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ia7kR8RtE2g
I fixed that for you. When he lumps together everything that has "evolution" in the name he is being dishonest: "evolution", in science, generally means "change over time". In the biological context, it means how life changes. In other contexts it means different things. Moreover, biological evolution presupposes the existence of life -- once life exists, it will change as described in evolution. To say otherwise is ignorance or dishonesty. Moreover, neither he nor any other creationist ever tried to lump "temporal evolution" in with all the other "evolutions", despite it being an important concept in physics. I guess it is because they know it would destroy their argument by showing how silly it is... The comment is highly misleading, being an evolution-sprinkling strawman itself: cosmic evolution != big bang, "chemical evolution" != nucleosynthesis, "organic evolution" != abiogenesis, "kind" = biblical term with no real life equivalent. While cosmic evolution exists and is studied scientifically, it includes the big bang theory, and others, but the big bang theory does not depend on it. The big bang theory is a consequence of physical law (General Relativity) and is testable -- it has been used to predict the cosmic microwave background radiation field before it was detected. So the comment was wrong about this. Nucleosynthesis has been observed in the real world (nuclear reactors, particle accelerators, the Sun) and its mechanisms are well understood from quantum physics. Moreover, the Big Bang nucleosynthesis theory predicts, with good accuracy, the relative abundances of hydrogen and helium atoms directly from physical laws. So the comment was wrong about it as well. Stellar and planetary formation and evolution are based on the physical laws and observed in the Universe at large. There are stars in all stages of formation around the Universe, and their properties can be accounted for with current models of stellar interior -- properties such as luminosity, color, radiant spectrum, etc. So, yeah, the comment was wrong again. What a shocker. Abiogenesis is still in its infancy. It is based on physical and chemical laws, and has proven some interesting things about self-replicating molecules. Also, the formation of organic compounds by inorganic compounds has been observed in controlled conditions -- the same kind of conditions which were previously predicted by the theory. See the pattern about the comment being wrong? "Macroevolution" is a successive number of "microevolutionary" changes. It has been observed -- speciation, transitional fossils -- particularly when you factor in that "kind" is a meaningless term that sometimes lumps together species of entirely different genera. So the comments are 0 for 6.
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marzojr wrote:
nfq wrote:
evolution in a strawman: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ia7kR8RtE2g
I fixed that for you.
thanks... i was going to write "evolution in a nut case", but i accidentally wrote "nut shell".
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I don't really understand why most creationists (and some other people) oppose the idea evolution. What is so scary about it, that it must be so strongly opposed? Even when some creationists agree with the scientific definition of the term "evolution" (ie. evolution has nothing to do about how life came to be, and it certainly has nothing to do with how the universe came into existence, it only has to do with how species change over time), they still oppose it dogmatically. But why? Why is it so scary? Is it because the theory of evolution states that humans and apes have a common ancestor species? Is that why the whole of evolution is so fiercely opposed? The idea of, for example, one species of lizard evolving over time to become two distinct species of lizard is fiercely opposed because the theory of evolution states that humans and apes have a common ancestor species? In other words, because creationists don't agree with one single statement in the theory, they fiercely oppose the entire theory and everything that it encompasses? Even if creationists oppose the idea of humans having common ancestry with apes, for understandable reasons, I still don't understand why they oppose other species evolving into distinct new species. What's so scary about that? Is there something in that idea which is so abhorrent and heretic that it must be denied fiercely at all costs and against all evidence? Why? What exactly is so scary about it? Creationists accept that species change over time due to, for example, natural adaptation or selective breeding. However, they maintain that these changes will never go so far as to make two isolated populations of the same species so different that they cannot interbreed anylonger, in which case they have become, by definition, two different species. That would mean that there's some kind of phenomenon or force stopping such changes from happening. That there's some law of nature, or something, which will always keep populations of the same species interbreedable regardless of how much they change due to natural adaptation. Exactly what is this force? Why should such a force even exist?
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Disagreeing with proof is crazy. Filling the gaps with religion is ok.
nfq
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GMan wrote:
I find it incredible people would rather believe a small handful of non-scientific religious philosophers over scientists who's thinking skills are higher than many people here.
i used to think it was incredible too, but that was when i still believed in darwin's theory of evolution. if his theory is true, then people had less knowledge about the world before (and they were dumber), but if it is not true, then some people in the past could have been more intelligent and knowledgeable than all the scientists today. and science might not be the only way to gain knowledge. you might be able to get information from highly evolved spiritual beings (angels and aliens). some people can for example speak a language which they have never learned/heard before. it's called xenoglossy. the pharaoh's in egypt were called gods. maybe they were called gods because they were so much more evolved than the rest of humans, that they seemed like gods to us. and they could do miracles with their technology, like regenerating limbs.
Warp wrote:
I don't really understand why most creationists (and some other people) oppose the idea evolution. What is so scary about it, that it must be so strongly opposed?
if evolution is true, then the bible can't be taken literally. for example, the earth can't be 6000 years old. and if the bible can't be taken literally, then how can we follow the bible/word of god? how can we follow something that we can't even understand? who decides which interpretation is correct? the reason people oppose the idea of evolution is because the theory of evolution opposes most religious scriptures. almost all religions say that we were created by gods and we were taught by beings who came down to earth. another reason to oppose evolution is that it's anti-intuitive. the world is too complex and big that it could have "created itself" by an ungodly unintelligent natural process. there isn't much evidence for the theory of evolution, so it's more like a belief than a theory. if you don't believe there is anything spiritual, then evolution might sound like the only plausible explanation. most people today are materialists. they believe that "matter" is the only thing that exists. they don't believe that there is a "spiritual" universe. furthermore, some christians don't like the idea that we evolved from slimy amoebas, and they don't want to believe that jesus was an ape. personally, i believe in the hindu and nazi mythology/theory which says that apes were created because some humans in atlantis turned into apes because they sinned. in that sense, i do believe in a common ancestor, but humans were the common ancestor of all creatures (and gods were the ancestors of humans).
Is there something in that idea which is so abhorrent and heretic that it must be denied fiercely at all costs and against all evidence? Why? What exactly is so scary about it?
evolution is heresy. if evolution is true, then many things in the bible must be false. can there even be a global flood if evolution is true? if evolution is true, why did jesus die on the cross? the bible says that god will restore the earth the way it used to be. what will he restore it to? more death and more suffering? because that's what evolution says happened... animals died and suffered for millions of years. the bible says that when we were first created, we lived forever... there was no death. watch debates like this to gain better understanding of fundamentalist creationists: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNuHuG517lI&feature=related
Creationists accept that species change over time due to, for example, natural adaptation or selective breeding. However, they maintain that these changes will never go so far as to make two isolated populations of the same species so different that they cannot interbreed anylonger, in which case they have become, by definition, two different species. That would mean that there's some kind of phenomenon or force stopping such changes from happening. That there's some law of nature, or something, which will always keep populations of the same species interbreedable regardless of how much they change due to natural adaptation. Exactly what is this force? Why should such a force even exist?
i doubt many creationists oppose species evolving into different species, because hasn't that (speciation) already been proven/observed? rather, most creationist oppose the idea that creatures can turn into different "kinds" of animals. a chihuahua and a great dane might not be able to interbreed, but they are still the same kind of animal: dog. dog proves god. we have artificially tried to create different dogs for centuries, but still, we only have dogs. there is no evidence that species could through natural selection and mutations change so much that they would create all the different animals that we see in the world.
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nfq wrote:
if evolution is true, then the bible can't be taken literally. for example, the earth can't be 6000 years old. and if the bible can't be taken literally, then how can we follow the bible/word of god? how can we follow something that we can't even understand? who decides which interpretation is correct?
No Christian takes the entire bible literally. Not a single one. Or are you going to claim that some Christians believe that the Heaven will be full of sheep? There are certain instances in the bible where the word "lamb" is used metaphorically, not literally, and every single Christian in existence understands and accepts that. So no, the entire bible is not literal. There are metaphors, similes, figures of speech and parables. Not even you can deny that. And even if we assumed for a moment that the universe was really just 6000 years old, how does that prove that evolution doesn't happen?
the reason people oppose the idea of evolution is because the theory of evolution opposes most religious scriptures. almost all religions say that we were created by gods and we were taught by beings who came down to earth.
I fail to see how evolution opposes scriptures. Evolution is only about how species change over time. Is there anything in the bible that contradicts this notion? If we assume for a moment that the story of creation in the bible is a parable and that the universe really is billions of years old, is there anything else in the bible that would contradict evolution? Is the first chapter in the bible the only place that "contradicts" (in a way) evolution, if taken literally? Or are there any other places as well?
another reason to oppose evolution is that it's anti-intuitive. the world is too complex and big that it could have "created itself" by an ungodly unintelligent natural process.
There you go with the misconception that evolution is about how life came to be.
they believe that "matter" is the only thing that exists. they don't believe that there is a "spiritual" universe.
Can you blame them for that? There's not a single piece of verifiable evidence showing otherwise. It's the goal of science to explain what can be seen and measured. What else are they going to say? Are they going to lie about the existence of a spiritual world even though they can't prove it nor show any evidence? Science requires proof. It's that simple.
furthermore, some christians don't like the idea that we evolved from slimy amoebas, and they don't want to believe that jesus was an ape.
That's a completely subjective emotional point of view, not rational. Science is not driven be emotions and by what we like or don't like. It's driven by measurable facts.
personally, i believe in the hindu and nazi mythology/theory which says that apes were created because some humans in atlantis turned into apes because they sinned.
That's the difference between you and science: Science doesn't "believe" in things. Science observes, measures and presents hypotheses and theories to explain those observations. Science requires actual tangible evidence, not just folktales. If something cannot be observed, it falls completely out of the realm of science.
evolution is heresy. if evolution is true, then many things in the bible must be false.
A metaphor is not "false". A metaphor is a metaphor. It's the message it's trying to convey that is true or false. If Jesus calls his followers "lambs", that's not a lie, even though his followers are not literally lambs. It's a metaphor.
i doubt many creationists oppose species evolving into different species
You are wrong there. Many creationists strongly oppose the notion of species evolving into several new species. (I just don't understand why.)
nfq
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Joined: 5/10/2005
Posts: 1204
Warp wrote:
Or are you going to claim that some Christians believe that the Heaven will be full of sheep? There are certain instances in the bible where the word "lamb" is used metaphorically, not literally, and every single Christian in existence understands and accepts that.
when i talk about biblical literalists i mean people who take the bible literally, except when it's obvious that it's metaphorical, as in the case of lambs.
And even if we assumed for a moment that the universe was really just 6000 years old, how does that prove that evolution doesn't happen?
because evolution needs more time than 6000 years.
Evolution is only about how species change over time. Is there anything in the bible that contradicts this notion?
the bible says that animals bring forth after their kind, but evolution claims that animals can turn into different kinds of animals over millions of years.
If we assume for a moment that the story of creation in the bible is a parable and that the universe really is billions of years old, is there anything else in the bible that would contradict evolution?
i'm sure there is, but i can't come up with anything right now, and i don't have so much knowledge about this. you should ask a young earth creationist.
There you go with the misconception that evolution is about how life came to be.
if you believe in evolution, then you also have to believe that life started from non-living matter.
Science requires proof. It's that simple.
science doesn't always require proof. look at the theory of big bang and evolution for example.
That's the difference between you and science: Science doesn't "believe" in things. Science observes, measures and presents hypotheses and theories to explain those observations. Science requires actual tangible evidence, not just folktales.
the things that religions and folktales talk about were discovered by ancient scientists.
A metaphor is not "false". A metaphor is a metaphor. It's the message it's trying to convey that is true or false.
the creation story in the bible is metaphorical. most things in the bible are metaphorical. i have to say that i actually agree with you about most things, i just defend the creationists because otherwise we would have nothing to discuss.
Joined: 4/7/2008
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[I no longer support the original content of this post.]
Joined: 3/7/2006
Posts: 720
Location: UK
GMan wrote:
what makes the Bible reliable evidence? You cannot and never will prove the Bible to be a reliable source of information.
Nice, you ask him to answer a question then say that whatever answer he gives is wrong. Good way to carry on a discussion. Not that any discussion with nfq is going to be fruitful. Just letting you know.
Voted NO for NO reason