Religion. The evolution, creation and everything in between megathread

[Zarkov]

I read it.

But it made my head hurt.

[KiLL3r]

if u read the first line of each paragraph youll find he saying we are all wrong and he is right  :laff:

[Apostrophe Spacemonkey]

I read it too.

But i'm quite annoyed dirtyape brought this thread back from the dead, we all went through this a year ago.

[Arnifix]

My logic is perfect. And when I first commented I was smashed out of my gourd.

Arnifix, when I say testable to workable science, unfortunately you have to leave out the specific supernatural events, as obviously they fall outside the laws of science!

Too hard basket! Oh no! Ahhh, supernatural, the ultimate excuse.

evolution is a very changeable and plastic theory

Very good. However it doesn't mean jack. In over 150 years, I would've expected science to have improved upon Darwin's work. Rather similar to, oh, I don't know, just about every other thing scientists have ever done.

I can belittle other religions if they make less sense, or fail when tested with testable science

Oh yeah, that's really learned. I especially like the less sense bit. Less sense than your own religion? That's sure as hell how it reads to me!

If from the evidence it is very very very probable that I picked my nose, then I make an informed assumption

Sounds like the theory of evolution to me. If dolphins have 98% (don't quote me) the same genes as humans, it doesn't mean god made us.

You are belittling Christianity for crying out loud because in your opinion it doesn't stack up.

Actually, I'm belittling creationism. Christians tend to belittle themselves without my help.

this wouldn't entail subsequent "evolution", but merely a sorting and isolation of the information already contained within those original genes

I smell bullshit. Show me one shred of proof that you have a common ancestor for every species from the family canidae. My money is that you can't. And yet, you are using this exact same argument to criticise scientists who study evolution. Do you have fossil evidence showing that at (insert time of flood here) there was mass extinction of animals? Because I'm fairly certain that nobody else has.

Noah had 100 years to collect the animals by the way

Where is your scientific evidence proving that people were more intelligent and could live longer in those times. I suspect nowhere except "the bible".

You assume they were primitive people, based on your evolutionary assumptions. I don't.

I believe they were primitive people based on the cold, hard, scientific facts that proved they were primitive people.

the effect of a little flow of water over a very long time, generally has the same effect as a lot of water over a very little amount of time.

Correct, but it's bloody obvious which way it's happened.

freedom of freewill

Ahhh, yes, good old free will. Nothing to do with our brains having evolved in such a way as to create sentience, a pretty fucking impressive feat. Good old evolution, keeping progress progressing. The freewill to choose being damned to eternal torment for not beliving in this religion. Always pleasant. The idea that your god is a forgiving god, is a load of crap. Religion of love my arse (if anybody makes a loving my arse joke, I'll throw them to the creationists).

Galileo himself, who first suggested that the sun was the centre of the solar system was a creationist

Most christians aren't as radical as you. And I'm not using radical in the 80's sense meaning cool.

I can't be bothered writing anymore. This is obviously a sign that evolution is flawed and I'm evading the difficult questions etc etc etc. Some of the stuff here I am in no way qualified to answer. But then again, neither are you. Perhaps I'm just not as much of a zealous extremist as you are.

[Arnifix]

I read it too.

But i'm quite annoyed dirtyape brought this thread back from the dead, we all went through this a year ago.

Yes indeed. Some things should never be disturbed, like Cthulhu.

[KiLL3r]

summing up arnifix's point i think we can thoroughly conclude that lauras bf has been brainwashed.

either that or he was fiddled with by priests at a young age

[Zarkov]

When I'm reincarnated it'll be as an athiest.

God willing.

[Fragin]

Even I cant be bothered reading all that.

Summarize please.

Ok i'll give it a try...

- JayKay is a Creationist.

- He believes in a literal interpretation of his religious text - 'The Bible'.

- The theory of evolution is incompatible with this religious text.

- He must therefore discredit the theory of evolution.

- If he does not - then his beliefs will no longer be valid and he must abandon them.
 
- His beliefs are such that he would rather latch onto any argument that discredits the theory of evolution, no matter how bizarre or improbable, rather than abandon his beliefs.

[BerG]

Thanks Frag.

[dirtyape]

But i'm quite annoyed dirtyape brought this thread back from the dead, we all went through this a year ago.

I had some material which i believed was worthy of discussion. My original posts were interesting were they not?

[Black Heart]

I agree, there was no way the majority of the people living 4000 years ago new that the world was round. Which make the Bibles depiction of the earth as spherical all the more amazing.

Actually the concept ancient people were backward and thought the world was flat is a well recorded fallacy/myth. totally debunked. also the fact polynesians are genetically similar to asians highlights that 'sailing off the edge of the world', was a completely western fear. Galileo as i recall was sought after for being a  heretic, and was threatened with the inquisition. (google it 'heretic galileo')

Noah had 100 years to collect the animals by the way. But again, you didn't bother to even read the account did you. Your also presuming he had no technology, which if you take into account their supremely more intelligent brains and long lives, (a result a far kinder enviroment and far less degenerate gene pool as suggested in the account) they must have done. Western civilisation has gone from tribal communities to the present in 1100 years, with relatively short lives, and the use of well less than 100% of our brains! Imagine how much faster we would have got to this point if we were still using 100% of our brains, and lived 500 plus years! You assume they were primitive people, based on your evolutionary assumptions. I don't.

so we are getting dumber. as is every single other form of life. degenerating. yet when we were so smart we made all the fuck ups that god punished our ancestors for, giving into temptation (with their massive brainpower the consequences would have been obvious no?) and over the last 2000 years god hasn't bothered to do fuck all to us? an impartial observer might think we are no longer considered worthwhile  by god. an impartial observer might conclude we're fucked anyway no matter what as we are just degenerate mutant garbage to god.

and as far as noahs is concerned the required faith to beleive that story is well beyond my means. no where does the bible tell us of degenerating longevity. further modern studies show our lifetime is actually growing larger. AND NOT due to technology, some of the longest living people in the world are japanese people living off a diet 99% fish and working each and every day, on a remote island.

the ability of a handful of people to care for 2 of every animal for a month no matter how intelligent they are is impractical. the animals WOULD die, there was no where near enough room for food, or time to dispose of animal waste. many animals are indigenous to continents. ie marsupials & australia.
the flaws are too long to list.

[Arnifix]

When I'm reincarnated it'll be as an athiest.

God willing.

Bahahahahaha!

[Simon_NZ]

Nice stuff Blackheart you pretty much took the line I was going to.

Anyway my good friend fps doug has a opinnion on creation to...

Religion. The evolution, creation and everything in between megathread

[Black Heart]

In fact it is the by the very freedom that God has given us that we us to keep ourselves seperate from him. We have the freedom to stay loyal to him, although he could have taken that freedom from us by "programming" us like robots to be loyal to him. He even gave his non earthly lifeforms (Satan etc) the freedom to rebel from him if they so chose. It is this very "godlike" freedom of freewill that makes us "in his image", as it states in Genesis.

what kind of fucked up mind considers the consequence of  eternal damnation as a hand in hand part of free will? oh wait I've seen sopranos, i know exactly what kind. God the creator of evil. God the creator of suffering. God the creator of Hell. God the perfect creator of imperfection.

Rationality set aside, delusion will fill the void.

[Arnifix]

Heh, BH, you reminded me of something else. It's not intelligent design. It's bloody shocking design. Either that or a fucked up experiment.

[Steady]

Steady, you need to update your creationist vs evolution arguments. Even the most prominent ardent defendants of evolution admit that the "Christians tried to defend the flat earth, and then the earth centred solar system" argument is actually incorrect. In more than one place in the Bible the earth is referred to by the Hebrew word for "sphere"!
In addition, Galileo himself, who first suggested that the sun was the centre of the solar system was a creationist. And regardless, evolution is a very changeable and plastic theory. Infact, just about every idea Darwin came up with have since been debunked by evolutionists, hence the modern term of "neo-darwinism". Evolutionists are constantly correcting themselves; therefore you have to allow creationists to as well.

And yes, I can belittle other religions if they make less sense, or fail when tested with testable science. You are belittling Christianity for crying out loud because in your opinion it doesn't stack up.

Ooooh so when the church was persecuting Galileo they were embracing him? Thats a good try at rewriting history. And as for updating my arguments, I was simply making the point that the church often changes it's tune in an effort to stay valid. You can interpret the bible however you want to, according to what you want to gain from it, faith, knowledge or whatever. I was forced to go to chapel three times a week for seven years. After hearing all the arguments Christians had to offer (it wasn't just priests speaking, it was students, teachers, guests, etc) I remain unconvinced. Simply because it is a convenient fairy tale made up to provide farmers with easy answers. That is until it became about keeping power, and went off on their crusades and burnt heretics and gypsies and stuff. So there  :newangel:

[Black Heart]

oh you mean things like the human spine being so bent and being an idiots design for an upright creature, well by the standards of our degenerate slow minded engineers of today anyway.

tell me how many thousands of years ago was it humans built flying machines? And why is it some of the cleverest inventions are chinese  when the 'almighty christian gods' chosen (jews at that time) were running around stoning people for gathering wood on sundays. (quoted law of the bible, so it must be true!)

[Arnifix]

I often get wood on a sunday.

[Zarkov]

I often get wood on a sunday.

It's a day of rest for Christ's sake.

[Arnifix]

So I make her do all the work? And hey, if christ pops round he can join in. It'll be like a menagie-a-three.

[- NicK -]

Getting back to the topic, Steady I think we should be careful not to confuse the god with the church, as they are in fact separate entities. The Church is a construct of man and so is very, very fallible. The Bible was 'written' by God and is what should be focused on in this debate.

what kind of fucked up mind considers the consequence of eternal damnation as a hand in hand part of free will? oh wait I've seen sopranos, i know exactly what kind. God the creator of evil. God the creator of suffering. God the creator of Hell. God the perfect creator of imperfection.

Perhaps damnation should not be seen as the punishment, but salvation seen as a gift. We all have the free will to accept this divine gift, or reject it.

[Simon_NZ]

Space monkey you are correct; however it all comes down to probability. If from the evidence it is very very very probable that I picked my nose, then I make an informed assumption. You can't prove that the food you eat for dinner tonight isn't infact disguised shit. But you make an informed assumption, and live by it by eating your dinner.

Ok, lets start with this.

Without a shadow of doubt I can prove that what I did eat for dinner tonight was not shit.


That is 'assumption' it is a fact. If I choose to I could follow the chicken from the battery, to the freezing works, then to the supermarket for me to buy. Second I could take a pile of shit, get out my chemistry set and note the differences in chemical make up between shit and chicken. While I am eating the chicken I could take scans of the brain waves then compare then to brains waves of when im eating shit.

Either one of these options will prove they are not the same.

Arnifix, when I say testable to workable science, unfortunately you have to leave out the specific supernatural events, as obviously they fall outside the laws of science! Notice that these events clearly state that these were supernatural events; if however they were depicted as natural events, then they would fail against testable science. In addition, an ocean liner sized floating device with the dimensions clearly outlined in Genesis would contain more than enough space for a pair of each animal kind, with plenty of space for food storage etc. But I doubt you have ever looked into the detail. Studies have been done showing the feasibility of the event, if your interested.

http://teacher.pas.rochester.edu/phy_labs/AppendixE/AppendixE.html

Just read that. Please.

I would love to see these 'studies' am I academic snob so I prefer my sources from a University of another respected think tank, I dont want studies by your local church please.

And no, you can't watch penquins evolve if you want to. You can often see species change within the boundaries of their current gene pool, but you will not be able to give me an example of any animal or organism that has increased its genetic information (which is what evolution relies on).

Yes you can.

In the 1950s, Dmitry Belyaev of the Soviet Union's Institute of Cytology and Genetics in Novosibirsk, Siberia, began testing a hypothesis to look at whether selection for a behavioral trait—tamability—could bring with it the morphological and physiological traits associated with domestication and pedomorphosis. He postulated that if human intention was involved, humans would have selected their wolves for tameness, whatever that was. Since tameness and aggression were probably regulated by hormones, then selecting for tameness and against aggression would mean selecting for physiological variants as well. The physiological variants, in turn, might be those associated with the retention of juvenile traits (see Belyaev 1979; Trut 1999).

Belyaev and his colleagues decided to initiate a breeding program that would strongly select tamability and see what happened to the biological phenotype after several generations. He chose as his test animal a species close to the wolf, namely the silver fox, Vulpes vulpes, an animal never before domesticated. The experiment began with 30 male foxes and 100 vixen from a commercial fur farm. (Such animals had been bred without conscious selection for over 50 years, so these were already foxes that survived in caged conditions). The criteria for tamability were very strict. Only about 5% of the males and 20% of the females are selected to breed. The foxes were not trained, so the major component of their tameness should be genetic. Tameness was measured by the ability of young, sexually mature foxes to behave in a friendly manner to their handlers, wagging their tales and whining. Eventually, a "domesticated elite" classification arose—these were the foxes that actually sought to establish human contact, licking the scientists like dogs would. By the tenth generation, 18 percent of the young foxes were in this elite category. By the twentieth generation, 35% were in this category. Today, over forty years after the breeding had begun, these domesticated foxes comprise from 70-80% of the test population.

After 40 years and over 30 generations of selection, has the physical nature of the population changed? The most obvious physiological changes involved corticosteroids. In wild foxes, the levels of corticosteroids, hormones involved in adaptation to stress, rise sharply between the age of 2–4 months, reaching adult levels by 8 months of age. The domesticated wolves had their corticosteroid surge significantly later. The domesticated foxes have a much lower adrenal response to stress, and they have more serotonin in their blood. Other physical changes produced by selection for tamability were the constellation of characters associated with domestication: regional depigmentation, floppy ears, and rolled tails. Belyaev claimed that the finding of the same suite of morphological changes in different types of domesticated animals selected for different traits (milk production, wool quality, strength, etc.), by different groups of people, was not just an artifact of the gene pool of these particular 130 foxes but was the common outcome of selecting for this behavioral trait (Trut 1988, 1999).

By selecting for a behavioral trait associated with juveniles, Belyaev's group may have selected for those animals whose growth rates were such that pedomorphism would result. Floppy ears, for instance, are characteristics found in newborn wolves, and even the coat pigmentation patterns may be due to the selection of certain genes. The gene Star is involved in the timing of melanoblast migration in foxes (Belyaev et al. 1981; Trut 1996). Certain alleles of this gene appear to have been selected and cause the piebald pigmentation patterns in the adults. Skull size has also changed to a more juvenile condition—but not by selecting directly for size, but for behavior.

The domestic fox is not yet a domestic wolf. It has not gotten to the point of domestication that we associate with dogs. However, in only 40 years, the fox has been domesticated by this group to such a degree that they can be sold as pets. Indeed, this might become their fate, as funds for these and other experiments in the former Soviet Union are in jeopardy, and there were no funds allocated last year for the feeding of these animals.

Genetics have been changed in a very small amout of time. See.

What evidence of yours am I not taking in?

Regardless, doesn't it strike you as pretty funny how its taken them this long (150years or so since evolution really started to take root in western society) to find one intermediary fish/reptile? They find many many examples of ancient fish fossils (some of which have since been found to still exist) which predate this supposed intermediary, and many reptiles that come after this supposed intermediary (but which are infact, still just fully formed reptiles, in no way intermediary). Yet infact, given the millions and millions of years one must allow for such a transition between these animal types (if it were possible at all at a genetic level), we would expect to find millions times more examples of various intermediary forms than we do fully formed "prehistoric" fish or "prehistoric" reptiles. But we don't.

Im a geologist, any fossil is a very rare find. The processes that need to take place for one to from are rare to find in a single place. Your ignoring so many variables in your post its insane. Period.

[Steady]

I'd personally prefer the "virgin" Mary, lol Jesus' dad was a dumb arse

[Simon_NZ]

Getting back to the topic, Steady I think we should be careful not to confuse the god with the church, as they are in fact separate entities. The Church is a construct of man and so is very, very fallible. The Bible was 'written' by God and is what should be focused on in this debate.


 Perhaps damnation should not be seen as the punishment, but salvation seen as a gift. We all have the free will to accept this divine gift, or reject it.

No it wasnt. It was written after his death.

[Arnifix]

Space monkey you are correct; however it all comes down to probability. If from the evidence it is very very very probable that I picked my nose, then I make an informed assumption. You can't prove that the food you eat for dinner tonight isn't infact disguised shit. But you make an informed assumption, and live by it by eating your dinner.[/QUOTE=laurasaur]

Ok, lets start with this.

Without a shadow of doubt I can prove that what I did eat for dinner tonight was not shit.

That is 'assumption' it is a fact. If I choose to I could follow the chicken from the battery, to the freezing works, then to the supermarket for me to buy. Second I could take a pile of shit, get out my chemistry set and note the differences in chemical make up between shit and chicken. While I am eating the chicken I could take scans of the brain waves then compare then to brains waves of when im eating shit.

Either one of these options will prove they are not the same.

Arnifix, when I say testable to workable science, unfortunately you have to leave out the specific supernatural events, as obviously they fall outside the laws of science! Notice that these events clearly state that these were supernatural events; if however they were depicted as natural events, then they would fail against testable science. In addition, an ocean liner sized floating device with the dimensions clearly outlined in Genesis would contain more than enough space for a pair of each animal kind, with plenty of space for food storage etc. But I doubt you have ever looked into the detail. Studies have been done showing the feasibility of the event, if your interested.[/QUOTE=laurasaur]

http://teacher.pas.rochester.edu/phy_labs/AppendixE/AppendixE.html

Just read that. Please.

I would love to see these 'studies' am I academic snob so I prefer my sources from a University of another respected think tank, I dont want studies by your local church please.

And no, you can't watch penquins evolve if you want to. You can often see species change within the boundaries of their current gene pool, but you will not be able to give me an example of any animal or organism that has increased its genetic information (which is what evolution relies on).[/QUOTE=laurasaur]

Yes you can.



What evidence of yours am I not taking in?

Regardless, doesn't it strike you as pretty funny how its taken them this long (150years or so since evolution really started to take root in western society) to find one intermediary fish/reptile? They find many many examples of ancient fish fossils (some of which have since been found to still exist) which predate this supposed intermediary, and many reptiles that come after this supposed intermediary (but which are infact, still just fully formed reptiles, in no way intermediary). Yet infact, given the millions and millions of years one must allow for such a transition between these animal types (if it were possible at all at a genetic level), we would expect to find millions times more examples of various intermediary forms than we do fully formed "prehistoric" fish or "prehistoric" reptiles. But we don't.[/QUOTE=Laurasuar]

Im a geologist, any fossil is a very rare find. The processes that need to take place for one to from are rare to find in a single place. Your ignoring so many variables in your post its insane. Period.

If only mine could find mine. It was cooler because it involved penguins. They could kick your foxes asses.