Religion. The evolution, creation and everything in between megathread

[m3th]

Hey guys and gals.

Recently there has been some religious discussion on ICONZ. I was just typing replies to the thoughts in the 'Meat' thread when i just cruised over to the 'How evil are you' thread and saw the same thing being discussed there.

So lets leave it out of all other ICONZ threads and focus it just here.

Verrt is a moderator here in 'Off Topic' these days. Which is great because i think hes a good bloke and agree with his ideas on what is stupid trolling and not helping a discussion.

So there we go, weve got a moderator for this discussion, something it may need if it degenerates. However, the idea of 'lets not talk about this because it will just cause an agrument' i really dont like. We are not all teenagers who only come to ICONZ to say 'leet' alot and talk in single sentances. Lets do this guys, im really interested to see into some of the personalities ive been sharing this forum with.

a couple of things thou.

personal attacks. dont do this. feel free to pick apart what someone has posted, analyse and rebut all you like. but dont personalise it. this means:

bY said: The sky is red
m3th replies with: No its not you goddamn retard.

thats a personal attack. keep it objective.

bY said: The sky is red
m3th replies with: The sky is blue and if you go outside right now youll see its the truth.

I know thats obvious, but there can be no misunderstanding here.

the second thing.

Mine is a democratic nation (as is yours in nz). we dont have a constitution, but our laws are formed in a similar vein.

anyway. you know what the FIRST Amendment of the US Consitution is?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

and thats how we feel about it here in Australia, you guys over there in NZ and the poms over in England and basically all of us 'civilised' nations. So the right for someone to believe what they want is not in question here. I never said anything against this, this is the way our great nations work.

so lets just leave this stuff out of the discussion from here in. Its redundant and we all feel the same way about it.

ok? got it? everyone has the right to believe what they want. thats not the discussion. the discussion is firstly evolution vs creation and then all the things that will crop up from that.

thirdly. only some people are going to want to participate here. before you post in this thread think to yourself:

'am i contributing anything to this?'
'is the thread better off with my post?'

This is just to stop idiots coming in and saying 'this is silly and we shouldnt discuss this'.
Well, we are discussing it. If you dont want to be part of it, thats fine, but please remain silent and dont shit up our thread.

ok thats it. everyone got the idea? this is a serious discussion on ICONZ. this isnt your run of the mill, idiotic spamfest thread. repsect each others ideas and lets have some interesting (and probably enlightening) debate.

[m3th]

so ill get the ball rolling.

Can someone tell me why i should believe in creation when there is no evidence to support it?

Futhermore besides logical conclusions from the Bible such as 'We shouldnt kill each other' and 'sleeping with your neighbours wife will probably piss him off', why is there any validity to the more abstract concepts detailed within?

Im refering to the existance of god, wether Jesus was his son, miracles and other such concepts.

[Darkov]

imho, jesus was the ancient day martin luther-king. people thought he was so 1337 that he had to be the son of god.

the bible is confusing, i think it's supposed to be like aesop's fables, i.e. it has stories that arn't necessarily true but have sensible morals such as do not kill etc.

there is no real evidence to prove god exists or any god does. apart from urban myths and fanatical belief (which would not hold up in science or a court) this is further confirmed by the pope interacting with other religions like he did in germany recently. according to christianity, god is the only god and to believe in more is heretical.

with religion comes conflict inevitably, however it's pretty much based on argueing who's imaginary friend is better.

however, i don't care what people believe, it's their life and most of the time useless arguing with them as they will never accept your view point. i hate mormons though, bastards keep trying to come around to my house until i called the police.

[Netherai]

Remember that the Bible is a collection of stories transferred for hundreds of years by word of mouth, only collected into one volume after a LONG period of time, and even then it's likely that some meaning or parts of individual "books" are lost, mistranslated or simply forgotten.

Also, some ideas in the stories passed down over the centuries may have changed as the social and political climate changed too, depending on beliefs by the speaker, by the authors who penned it, by the translators who converted from ancient Hebrew, to Greek, to Latin, to English... take everything with a grain of salt and it all leads to a good way to lead your life. The stories may very well be the word of god, but man has been the vessel for it over many hundreds of years, and we all know how fallible man is?

The book of Genesis could very well be a story that has scientific relevance if you assume that a "day" for God isn't a 24 hour period I think the only thing that ruins the big-bang then water/land then simple plants then fish, dinosaurs leading to birds, then mammals then man is that day 3 and 4 (I think?) are in the wrong order... but given how the stories are 2000 or more years old and passed verbally I don't think that's really so bad It's allegory, God may very well have done all these things, just because we also have scientific reasons behind things doesn't necessarily mean that she didn't set the ball rolling

The problem with reading any religious text is that treating it as fact without interpretation leads to fundamentalism, an evil in itself

[endmaxd]

jesus was a "black" jew so why do christians praise him? and also why the hell do we look up to god... doesn't that make him a dictator if we listen to him

if you believe in god do you believe in the devil... you can't have one without the other so why not believe in both... and if adam was created by adams rib she is therefore a "clone" and a blood relation and wouldn't that be counted as incest? and also i know females like to believe sometimes that god is female but the bible states god created man in his image and then created woman... that signifies that god is male why do we celebrate xmas on the 25th of decmber when it's been proven he was more likely born in july? and the bible was written 700 years after jesus was "born" so how can we trust it is acturate/not a work of fiction?

a quote i like from the island

"who's this god"
"you know when you pray... god is the one who ignores you"

[m3th]

Darkov's point about Luther King is interesting. Yeah, apparently there were lots of messiahs around the time of Christ. If he just stood for human rights and generally was a nice guy then maybe thats why we remembered him.

However there are specific claims by the Bible and in turn the Christian faith about Jesus. Healing the sick. Turning water into wine. Walking across water. You all know what im talking about. However we know these things to be impossible. So these must be fabrications, if they are fabrications then who is to say the entire thing isnt a fabrication?

The book of Genesis claims the earth was completley covered in water at one point. It also says in the first part that God created Adam and Eve at the same time and then in the second part that Eve was created from Adam's rib. This is my problem with the Bible, its just not consistent or apparently factual.

The 'stories' contained in the Bible do indeed contain socialogical truths. Stuff like if everyone goes around killing each other its not a very nice place to live. However all these truths are self evident. What I mean is all of these conclusions are logical and need no 'divine intervention' to make them valid or even obvious.

Fanatics are fanatics. You cannot shake thier beliefs because they believe on a level devoid of reason or logic. However, a very smart doctor I was watching a program  just recently on this topic (hes the head of the American Skeptics Society) said something i thought was great:

'Smart people are very good at rationalising things they came to believe for non-smart reasons'

There is an epsiode of one of my favorite shows I really want you all to see. I think it would help this along and I would really like to hear some of the christians on this forum respond.

The show is 'Penn and Teller's Bullshit' and is one of my absolute favorites. Im going to look  at setting up an FTP server here at home and making available that episode so you guys can see it. Ill post details on how to access it.

[Netherai]

These people say it much better than I ever could m3th Have fun reading!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bible_and_history

Night night

[Apostrophe Spacemonkey]

jesus was a "black" jew so why do christians praise him?

ok, firstly Jesus was not "black", his was born in what is now the middle east, so therefore his skin would be the same colour as the people of that area. And even if he was black what has that got to do with anything? all people are the same no matter what their skin colour is.

if you believe in god do you believe in the devil... you can't have one without the other so why not believe in both...

people have the freedom to belive in whatever they want, so there's no problem with someone chooseing not to belive in the devil but still beliving in God.

why do we celebrate xmas on the 25th of decmber when it's been proven he was more likely born in july?

We are still unsure what year Jesus was born let alone the date, our modern calender did not exist until hundreds of years after the death of Jesus.

[Apostrophe Spacemonkey]

However there are specific claims by the Bible and in turn the Christian faith about Jesus. Healing the sick. Turning water into wine. Walking across water. You all know what im talking about. However we know these things to be impossible.

How do you know these things are impossible?, even in our modern day people have been know to perform miracles of healing people, the world is a mysterious place.

[endmaxd]

i wasn't saying we shouldn't praise him cause he's black i was saying everyone portraries him as white but he's not... the part you're supposed to pay attetion to is the fact he was in fact a jew... end of story

[Verrt]

Well he's not exactly going to be a christian, that religion was started after his death based  on his teachings.


I think Jesus existed, but his miracles may not have been as great as the bible makes out
Ever play chinese whispers?
where what you get at the end is compleatly different to what you had at the start
well try that over two thousand years, things are bound to get embelished a little


Im going to type up an idea that I just thought of while typing the above paragraph
and see how it shapes up as I go

A scientist in the not to distant future invents a time machine
He isn't generaly part of the mainstream science comunity
because he believes more in advancement than the teaching of what is already known
His device only works once, there is know coming back
he thinks over many weeks where best to travel to in time
eventualy he decides to go back roughly two thousand years ago to try and find Jesus Christ
he prepares for months, learing hebrew, yidish, aramaic
learning about comon diseases of the time so he can protect him self from them
eventualy he sets the machine into action and is transported back in time
he travels all through israel trying to find jesus, he asks about Jesus christ to nearly everyone he speaks with
his aramaic isn't exactly the same dilect as theirs over the years the language has changed much
but generaly they get the idea of what he is saying, but know one has heard of or seen this jesus christ
one day he sees an angry croud yelling at a girl who is having what is quite obvious to him an epeleptic fit
he pushes through the croud goes and holds the girl to prevent her spasms from hurting her or anyone else
soon enough the fit passes and she is fine again
he tells the croud the fit is over and walks away, he dosn't know it but he just saved the girls life
the croud would have surly killed her thinking she was possesed by a demon
as he travels looking for jesus he comes across many sick people and uses his basic medical knowledge to help them get better
steralising a wound and basic sanitation may seem like obvious things to us, but it's not to everyone
we still havn't convinced the english to bath every day
as this mans skills with the language of the time and is able to converse more easily
he starts telling the stories that he has read in the bible, the ones that jesus told
in the hope that someone else might have heard jesus telling them and tell him where they saw jesus.
as he's passing through one town he sees a man about to be stoned to death for some petty crime such as stealing bread
he is disgusted by this and strides through the croud and stands in front of the croud
He is absolutly furious that they could kill a man in such a horrible way for something as stupid as stealing a few morsals
He screams at the croud
"How can you kill this man for this!!, None of you has a right for this sort of vengance!"
the croud stops stunned, they weren't prepared for this
"Any one of you, who has never stolen, has never told a lie, never commited the smallest crime, you throw the stone, I dare you to kill this man!!"
The croud with pangs of guilt brought on by this strange man reluctantly disperses
one of them says while the walk off their own ways
"thats the man who is seeking Jesus Christ"
Word is spreading of the man who is seeking Jesus Christ, of his strange ways and ideas
his helping the sick and poor, his medical skill far beyond the doctors of the time
some people talk and make friends with him
he asks them about Jesus Christ and explains how important it is to find Jesus
but none of them have ever heard of of Jesus Christ, but they ask everywhere they go about him.
The man never did find Jesus but his friends traveled far and wide telling people about the man he was looking for and asking other people to look for him to

In fact even today this mans followers still tell everyone they meet to Seek Jesus

[laurasaur]

By the way, great topic and I will try my hardest not to break any of the rules Please everyone read them before posting hopefully you have already

so ill get the ball rolling.

Can someone tell me why i should believe in creation when there is no evidence to support it?

Futhermore besides logical conclusions from the Bible such as 'We shouldnt kill each other' and 'sleeping with your neighbours wife will probably piss him off', why is there any validity to the more abstract concepts detailed within?

Im refering to the existance of god, wether Jesus was his son, miracles and other such concepts.

Creationists and evolutionists, Christians and non-Christians all have the same evidence—the same facts. Think about it: we all have the same earth, the same fossil layers, the same animals and plants, the same stars—the facts are all the same regardless.

The difference is in the way we all interpret the facts. And why do we interpret facts differently? Because we start with different presuppositions. These are things that are assumed to be true, without being able to prove them. These then become the basis for other conclusions. All reasoning is based on presuppositions.  This becomes especially relevant when dealing with past events.

The one thing that really blows me away is how some people can believe that they are walking on this earth "by chance". Before I even get into it, read this -

Though Hoyle was not a Biblical creationist or even a Christian, he eventually recognized the impossibility of Darwinian evolution. Hoyle regularly took to task the Darwinian establishment for ignoring the complex sources of information and information processing programs (like DNA) needed for the creation and continuation of life. He realised that life couldn’t have arisen by chance in a primordial soup on Earth. First, he tried to solve the problem by saying that if we had the whole universe to work with instead of Earth, then this might overcome the problem. Hoyle favored and popularized a view called panspermia, the notion that life originated somewhere else in the universe and was driven to earth by electromagnetic radiation pressure.

But eventually he realised that even this would be woefully inadequate as a materialistic explanation of life’s origin. In his 1981 book Evolution from Space (co-authored with Chandra Wickramasinghe), he calculated that the chance of obtaining the required set of enzymes for even the simplest living cell was one in 1040,000 (one followed by 40,000 zeroes). Since the number of atoms in the known universe is infinitesimally tiny by comparison (1080), even a whole universe full of primordial soup wouldn’t have a chance.

Hoyle eventually came to believe that the fine-tuning of the universe as a whole was further evidence for a designer:

‘A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics … The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.’

It completely dumbfounds me how people can be so complacent in their thinking that we were created by a big bang. The chance of it ever occuring is just, completely unplausible.

Well I have much much more to say on this subject so I will return after university to post much more  :rnr:

[laurasaur]

Well he's not exactly going to be a christian, that religion was started after his death based  on his teachings.


I think Jesus existed, but his miracles may not have been as great as the bible makes out
Ever play chinese whispers?
where what you get at the end is compleatly different to what you had at the start
well try that over two thousand years, things are bound to get embelished a little


Im going to type up an idea that I just thought of while typing the above paragraph
and see how it shapes up as I go

A scientist in the not to distant future invents a time machine
He isn't generaly part of the mainstream science comunity
because he believes more in advancement than the teaching of what is already known
His device only works once, there is know coming back
he thinks over many weeks where best to travel to in time
eventualy he decides to go back roughly two thousand years ago to try and find Jesus Christ
he prepares for months, learing hebrew, yidish, aramaic
learning about comon diseases of the time so he can protect him self from them
eventualy he sets the machine into action and is transported back in time
he travels all through israel trying to find jesus, he asks about Jesus christ to nearly everyone he speaks with
his aramaic isn't exactly the same dilect as theirs over the years the language has changed much
but generaly they get the idea of what he is saying, but know one has heard of or seen this jesus christ
one day he sees an angry croud yelling at a girl who is having what is quite obvious to him an epeleptic fit
he pushes through the croud goes and holds the girl to prevent her spasms from hurting her or anyone else
soon enough the fit passes and she is fine again
he tells the croud the fit is over and walks away, he dosn't know it but he just saved the girls life
the croud would have surly killed her thinking she was possesed by a demon
as he travels looking for jesus he comes across many sick people and uses his basic medical knowledge to help them get better
steralising a wound and basic sanitation may seem like obvious things to us, but it's not to everyone
we still havn't convinced the english to bath every day
as this mans skills with the language of the time and is able to converse more easily
he starts telling the stories that he has read in the bible, the ones that jesus told
in the hope that someone else might have heard jesus telling them and tell him where they saw jesus.
as he's passing through one town he sees a man about to be stoned to death for some petty crime such as stealing bread
he is disgusted by this and strides through the croud and stands in front of the croud
He is absolutly furious that they could kill a man in such a horrible way for something as stupid as stealing a few morsals
He screams at the croud
"How can you kill this man for this!!, None of you has a right for this sort of vengance!"
the croud stops stunned, they weren't prepared for this
"Any one of you, who has never stolen, has never told a lie, never commited the smallest crime, you throw the stone, I dare you to kill this man!!"
The croud with pangs of guilt brought on by this strange man reluctantly disperses
one of them says while the walk off their own ways
"thats the man who is seeking Jesus Christ"
Word is spreading of the man who is seeking Jesus Christ, of his strange ways and ideas
his helping the sick and poor, his medical skill far beyond the doctors of the time
some people talk and make friends with him
he asks them about Jesus Christ and explains how important it is to find Jesus
but none of them have ever heard of of Jesus Christ, but they ask everywhere they go about him.
The man never did find Jesus but his friends traveled far and wide telling people about the man he was looking for and asking other people to look for him to

In fact even today this mans followers still tell everyone they meet to Seek Jesus

can I just ask (nice story by the way) how you think we came to exist?

[Growler]

a big white wad of stellar cream landed on a planet sized egg, and earth was formed, with all of its pimp ass hoes to go with it

hahahah, sorry, no more mindless drivel from me, just remember, there is no spoon

[laurasaur]

Oy! did you read the rules
My facts: 1
Growlers pimp facts: 0

back on topic fool

[Growler]

have you not seen men in black??  we are just some little marles and some aliens sack.  

and we got here on a aeroplane.... then all given amnesia and the aliens used vanishing rays to remove everything, and they left a few of their pets (dinosaurs) and we slowly started to re-creat our previous life again.

you watch, in another 500 years or so there will be no internet or anything, we will all be back to peeing pictures on cave walls and wiping our ass with banana palms. just as we start to learn that there is "someome" out there, we will be zapped back to stupidity.

[dirtyape]

I'll post more later, but for now I'd just like for anyone who believes in creationism to think about this: Who/what made god?

[Apostrophe Spacemonkey]

I'll post more later, but for now I'd just like for anyone who believes in creationism to think about this: Who/what made god?

No one did, God may of have just always existed. The concept of a beginning is a human thing, as everything in our life has a start, but there is no reason why God would need a beginning.

[Netherai]

No one did, God may of have just always existed. The concept of a beginning is a human thing, as everything in our life has a start, but there is no reason why God would need a beginning.

God is intelligent though, right? and if it existed forever and ever and ever that means God would have been VERY bored before creating earth and heavens at the beginning of Genesis. Wouldn't that make an intelligent thing very lonely, depressed and maybe just a little bit crazy?

[Flicken]

I very much believe the Scientists when it comes about the formation of the world...

Evolution is the best, and most likely, way that plants/animals and such came into being...

My point is, something/one had to give it a hand/push in the right direction...

I believe there is something up there/around/whatever... I don't believe it to be "GOD", but maybe, a (I hate to use this word) force or power... I could go into higher plains of existence, etc... But i'm not...

I see it, if there is a God, woe on me for not seeing it. If there isn't, well, to bad for us. There won't be much fun in the afterlife...

I for one, hope that one of the religions are right, at least then, some people will go on... While we go to where-ever it is we go for not believing......

[Apostrophe Spacemonkey]

God is intelligent though, right? and if it existed forever and ever and ever that means God would have been VERY bored before creating earth and heavens at the beginning of Genesis. Wouldn't that make an intelligent thing very lonely, depressed and maybe just a little bit crazy?

Well no, god is not human, he wouldn't get lonely like humans do, and i'm sure he had lots of other things to do with his time.

Anyway, God existed before the creation of the universe, and time was created at the beginning of the universe at the big bang. So time has no meaning for God.

[Growler]

So time has no meaning for God.

anyone have an address for God? i want to send him a watch and one of those learn to tell the time sesame street books.

[Verrt]

sorry, no more mindless drivel from me

Liar

[dirtyape]

Isn't the big bang theory and creationism mutually exclusive? If you believe in the big bang then you must also believe in the quantum fluctuations which caused th formation of hydrogen and helium and thus ultimately the formation of stars and our solar system. This is a natural process - not the design of a diety.

Also, if god is thought to have always existed and it does not need a creator then why must the universe have a creator? Couldn't it also have always existed. Did god create the universe or did the universe create god?

[Darkov]

How long has the Big Bang theory been around? How long as existential knowledge of DNA been around?

It's very uncouth to assume that just because Mr. Scientist can't understand evolution that it's not true. We have fossils of neanderthals/ancient humanoids yes? Surely you can see the connection between humans and neanderthals.

The Big Bang theory, everyone asks "well what was before then to make it explode?"

It's a hard question to answer, one we don't know the answer to, but to me, it's a hell of a lot more plausible than some holy being who creates stuff and we have no proof of him being more than a figment of imagination.