Creationism vs. Evolution

camelCase

The Case of the Mysterious Camel.
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--snip--
In any case, you can keep playing the "but how did that happen" game with evolution until you realize that you are now saying that at one point there were NO organisms. Then you must go on to say that at one point the earth evolved from nothing. At this point you start talking about singularity. You start talking about the evolution of the universe.

You are now not only arguing the idea of HOW things came to be, but are faced with the question of "why" do things evolve in this way. At this point, you have a faith in evolution. A faith that says that life is inevitable and that creation is the default that the universe (and every conceiveable universe) gives rise to. This is also where a creationist has a very simple answer. A creationist answers the question with "God." and is done. An atheist does not have an answer at this point.

I hope that answers your question of where I am coming from. It is important to note that you can be scientific and make intelligent arguments and still believe in God. I find it ignorant, weather you believe in God or not, to act like there are no rational arguments for the existance of God. Science has never, and can never disprove the idea of a God.

I always thought that every other guy who supported evolution was of the idea that it was "chance" that life first existed =) The whole primordial soup idea, I guess. We're only able to question life because the conditions happened to be right here. If conditions happened to be right elsewhere, someone else *might* have evolved to be sentient enough to question life elsewhere. (Or conditions never became right and no life ever exists.) Not that I can prove that this is what happened, sadly =/

Kinda' like infinite monkeys with infinite time on a typewriter but with tonnes of matter, tonnes of variety of matter and tonnes of time.

As for "why", I subscribe to that "survival of the fittest" belief and, again, tonnes of time and tonnes of climate change led to tonnes of competition, tonnes of isolation and tonnes of biodiversity.

I can't prove this but I'm pretty sure all those fancy-schmancy biologists, people-who-dig-for-animal-bones and other bio-sciency people have worked hard over a long period of time to understand life can do it; I'm more interested in my computer and programming =x

And, as for this whole God stuff; not to be disrespectful but I do not believe in argumentum ad ignorantiam. Lack of proof otherwise does not imply that it is so. I believe that assertions put forward should have some proof before we can talk about its truthfulness; not that assertions put forward are true until we can disprove it.

Still, I do not want to engage in debate about religion; it never ends well for anyone and only serves to make everyone bitter to some degree.

Weird, though..
Creationism + Evolution, haha.
Something like..
"God created the first animals; the animals evolved into humans" ?

But I thought the Bible says that God created man, like, right out from the start? o.0
 

KaerfNomekop

Swim, fishies. Swim through the veil of steel.
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There is no historical evidence for the "Flying Spaghetti Monster" and so I doubt anyone would believe in him. There is; however, historical evidence that God exists. It's what we now call the Bible.
Is there much proof of the Bible as a historical document, rather than a glorified novel written in times past? Much of the Bible's contents are entirely open to interpretation. Who knows, some 10,000 years in the future (if life still exists), the Twilight saga might be seen as a "Biblical" series dictating the end times.

there's no way I can disagree with that, but I think I made my point clear anyhow (there is no evidence outside of the believers own heads, and there is no reason to believe in a god or anything supernatural whatsoever)
There's no reason not to. If you think something is real, you normally see things in a way that makes them agree with you, even if they don't.

I always thought that every other guy who supported evolution was of the idea that it was "chance" that life first existed =) The whole primordial soup idea, I guess. We're only able to question life because the conditions happened to be right here. If conditions happened to be right elsewhere, someone else *might* have evolved to be sentient enough to question life elsewhere. (Or conditions never became right and no life ever exists.) Not that I can prove that this is what happened, sadly =/

Kinda' like infinite monkeys with infinite time on a typewriter but with tonnes of matter, tonnes of variety of matter and tonnes of time.

As for "why", I subscribe to that "survival of the fittest" belief and, again, tonnes of time and tonnes of climate change led to tonnes of competition, tonnes of isolation and tonnes of biodiversity.
That's what I thought. It seems some perceptions are distorted, or maybe they're just assumed perceptions.

Weird, though..
Creationism + Evolution, haha.
Something like..
"God created the first animals; the animals evolved into humans" ?
Maybe "God" is another "scientist" like one of ours, conducting "experiments" on "life". Analogies don't go far enough to express my point.
 

Zakyath

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where I live, if you hear voices and trust in those who are from another world (which no else can see, talk to or meet), you are usually given a diagnosis and medication.

I can assure you that religion has killed more than heroin or any other drug for that matter. religion is dangerous and should not be preached or recommended to anyone. it must be fought, to preserve the lives and minds of millions.

That's what we call faith.

that's what you call faith. I call it a danger to both the believer, and those around him/her.
 

Dan

The New Helper.Net gives me great Anxiety... o.O;;
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Please everyone keep it calm and don't make too much mess of conversation. :) I'll try and keep it peaceful.

where I live, if you hear voices and trust in those who are from another world (which no else can see, talk to or meet), you are usually given a diagnosis and medication.

I can assure you that religion has killed more than heroin or any other drug for that matter. religion is dangerous and should not be preached or recommended to anyone. it must be fought, to preserve the lives and minds of millions.



that's what you call faith. I call it a danger to both the believer, and those around him/her.

First of all, religion has not killed anyone. People have used various religions in order to control and gain power over populations, and thus use religion as a tool to kill others. Without religion, there are many other tools at the disposal of man to kill others and cause suffering. Let's just get that straight.

Additionally, anyone who has stated that they have heard voices outside of Biblical times and teachings, is not acting with any organized religion out there. It is not a common belief that anyone can hear God speak to them physically.

So there goes both of those arguments. Men of God don't live their lives much differently, if at all differently, than you yourself do. We do not run around doing illogical things. We simply have faith that the BIG queston of "why" is unobtainable beyond the answer of "God."

It is true that people misunderstand their own religions as well as simply say things without knowing what they are talking about or how to defend it. Beliefs can be blind at times, and many probably fall under that category. There are still others who can keep to a logical and rational argument. I would be one of those people that you wouldn't want to just run at saying "religion izzz baaad ur dumb" and I hope that we can keep it much more formal and clever here.
 

Dan

The New Helper.Net gives me great Anxiety... o.O;;
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I don't object people's belief in religion or God, I think religion is good for people in many different ways they may perceive it to be, however personally I find religion to be not much of use. That being said how is "historical" evidence provide the ground that God exists? Your arguments previously made strong points but this lacks all conviction, a book written by man is suppose to prove the existence of God. How in any way does that sound convincing? Science can prove historical happening... just not that far yet, however historical evidence doesn't support science... not all the time anyway.

Maybe this gets asked a lot but where did god came from? I believe we can make the assumption that god is a single entity in which in your eyes created the universe, but for it to exist, it must first be derived from something.

The Bible does not prove that God exists any more than the history book in my history class proves that the civil war existed. It is a piece of evidence that I, and many others choose to believe in. If you have been keeping up with my argument, you should know that I do not intend to prove that God exists. I personally believe that there is no other answer than that of God, but I do know when something is impossible to prove. Likewise, I believe that it is impossible to prove that God does NOT exist. I know that the null hypothesis argument puts the burden on me logically; however, I believe that if you break it down far enough, even an atheist has a certain faith in some sort of beginning that cannot ever be answered. The answer gets pushed back as many steps as you would like, but singularity itself requires faith from where I stand.

What I meant about evidence is that the scientific method does not work for historical happenings. History is not rational, and the scientific method cannot be used to uncover it. One must venture to disprove claims that are made and works that have been written in order to uncover the past. The Bible proves nothing if you don't believe that it is really the word of God. If you do believe that it is the word of God, then it proves everything.
 

Zakyath

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Okay Dan, let's keep this rational.

Do you have ANY reason whatsoever (keep it rational) to believe in god?
 

Dan

The New Helper.Net gives me great Anxiety... o.O;;
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(Sorry for the multiposts btw, I have no idea how to multiquote with this new site...)

I always thought that every other guy who supported evolution was of the idea that it was "chance" that life first existed =) The whole primordial soup idea, I guess. We're only able to question life because the conditions happened to be right here. If conditions happened to be right elsewhere, someone else *might* have evolved to be sentient enough to question life elsewhere. (Or conditions never became right and no life ever exists.) Not that I can prove that this is what happened, sadly =/

Kinda' like infinite monkeys with infinite time on a typewriter but with tonnes of matter, tonnes of variety of matter and tonnes of time.

As for "why", I subscribe to that "survival of the fittest" belief and, again, tonnes of time and tonnes of climate change led to tonnes of competition, tonnes of isolation and tonnes of biodiversity.

I can't prove this but I'm pretty sure all those fancy-schmancy biologists, people-who-dig-for-animal-bones and other bio-sciency people have worked hard over a long period of time to understand life can do it; I'm more interested in my computer and programming =x

And, as for this whole God stuff; not to be disrespectful but I do not believe in argumentum ad ignorantiam. Lack of proof otherwise does not imply that it is so. I believe that assertions put forward should have some proof before we can talk about its truthfulness; not that assertions put forward are true until we can disprove it.

Still, I do not want to engage in debate about religion; it never ends well for anyone and only serves to make everyone bitter to some degree.

Weird, though..
Creationism + Evolution, haha.
Something like..
"God created the first animals; the animals evolved into humans" ?

But I thought the Bible says that God created man, like, right out from the start? o.0

I respect that you need evidence of God before you believe in him. It's only natural for people to seek to see things before they believe them. Many people; however, believe in Theories to be fact. There are many theories in many different areas of study that have yet to be disproven (like the big bang theory, string theory, etc) that people believe in. Very few atheists understand that religion can simply be thought of as a theory. Much like many theories that cannot be disproven easily or at all, religion is much the same. Many people would rather believe in nothing at all than a theory when it comes to the idea of why we are here.

As for the first part about an infinite number of possibilities to how the universe has become... You either can believe two things as far as I can tell:

1. This universe is the only universe that can exist. Everything has happened the way that it needed to based on the different physical properties of the universe. For example, we know what conditions need to be present for life to exist. These conditions are based on physical properties that we examine and realize are necessary, and yet no one knows why these properties could be any different. If the coefficient of gravitational force is off by a very small bit, everything would be different, and life could possibly not exist at all. The universe might not exist at all in this case; therefore, this is the ONLY way that life could have become. This case brings me to religion.

2. There are an infinite number of universes, in many cases universes where life did not evolve, and in some that did. This case requires an answer for what "machine" is pumping out these universes in the first place and how this could even be. We also have no way of even going about proving this.
 

Dan

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Sure it has, religion as a whole is to blame for the deaths of millions. And religion are dangerous.

Do guns kill people or do people kill people Firecat?
 

KaerfNomekop

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Do you have ANY reason whatsoever (keep it rational) to believe in god?
I realise this question was not directed towards me. But I feel there are some basic points to note.

Humans are
  • Inquisitive - we need to know the What and Why behind everything. If we don't, we make shit up until we find out.
  • Opinionated - we all believe in different things; some of us believe in nothing.
  • Stubborn - we tend to push for the things we believe (or don't believe) in. This can obscure rational thought at times.
  • Dominative - we need to feel more powerful than others. Especially those with different beliefs. We accomplish this by beating down others, either physically, verbally, mentally or emotionally.

The first two are enough to create a belief in God. The next two are the cause of this "discussion".

No, I'm talking about times such as when Bush said God told him to go to war on Iraq.
Perhaps he confused God with his conscience. Or maybe that was just an excuse, so the people wouldn't lost faith in him by seeing him as a violent, trigger-happy leader. So that he could stay on top. Dominating.
 

KaerfNomekop

Swim, fishies. Swim through the veil of steel.
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@FireCat:
What about burned at the stake or hanged.? Hmm torture in the name of religion?
That's an excuse. People are just sadistic. I could kill in the name of TH, inciting anger against all members of this forum, none of whom are to blame for the incident.

@Dan:
Click on Reply and the whole post is quoted in your reply where the cursor is.
There are an infinite number of universes, in many cases universes where life did not evolve, and in some that did. This case requires an answer for what "machine" is pumping out these universes in the first place and how this could even be. We also have no way of even going about proving this.
That's based on our current understanding of physics, and what we think the world is like based off our observations of THIS universe. For all we know, we're the abnormality and life was never meant to exist. Or we're not as "alive" as we think we are.
 

KaerfNomekop

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Taken from Wikipedia.

Stephen Hawking's views on God


In his early work, Hawking spoke of God in a metaphorical sense, such as in A Brief History of Time: "If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God." In the same book he suggested the existence of God was unnecessary to explain the origin of the universe.
His ex-wife, Jane, has described him as an atheist. Hawking has stated that he is "not religious in the normal sense" and he believes that "the universe is governed by the laws of science. The laws may have been decreed by God, but God does not intervene to break the laws."
 

Dan

The New Helper.Net gives me great Anxiety... o.O;;
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Okay Dan, let's keep this rational.

Do you have ANY reason whatsoever (keep it rational) to believe in god?


I have given answers in several of my posts as to why I believe that God exists. Have you read my posts or are you just TL;DR status?

God is an answer to "why" we exist. I am having trouble understanding what it is you believe in. Saying that "evolution is how life came to be" is fine, but it doesn't answer why. "Because things just are" is also not an answer. "I don't know" is also not an answer. "I don't care", "singularity", etc are not real answers as to why we exist. Why is it the default for life to exist on earth? Why does evolution work? What is the point of life? To survive... to reproduce. Well... why? Why must there be more life to reproduce for the purpose of reproducing? The answer to why is never answered by anyone but often times delayed or pushed back a few steps.

My answer is that there is a mind to the universe that wanted it to be this way. My answer covers for the fact that I don't understand what eternity in negative direction is like. I am putting this much on faith. There must be a God that likes life and matter and wants this to be. Additionally, there are historical texts that have been collected that describe amazing events in early history of when people were regularly getting visited by God. They are extremely unique in that they all fit together and tell the same accounts from many different angles. They seem to be legitamit in many ways that make me believe that they are more than just stories. They are also consistent and seem real to me. They teach morality in a way that no one has ever done. They teach humility and faith to God, and don't seem to be written for any one man to gain power or for a nation to control its people. The Bible says not to bow to a king but to the Lord. It's completely unique.

There are many many reasons as to why I believe in God. I don't want this to get out of hand, so I ask for your understanding that my beliefs are my own and that I do not care to debate them directly. If there is something that you would like to talk about, we can, but please do not personally attack me after this post.

Thank you.
 

Dan

The New Helper.Net gives me great Anxiety... o.O;;
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What about burned at the stake or hanged.? Hmm torture in the name of religion?

You did not answer my question. This means you are trolling this thread.
Do guns kill people or do people kill people? there are two answers. Pick one and be done with your argument.

Taken from Wikipedia.

Stephen Hawking's views on God


In his early work, Hawking spoke of God in a metaphorical sense, such as in A Brief History of Time: "If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God." In the same book he suggested the existence of God was unnecessary to explain the origin of the universe.
His ex-wife, Jane, has described him as an atheist. Hawking has stated that he is "not religious in the normal sense" and he believes that "the universe is governed by the laws of science. The laws may have been decreed by God, but God does not intervene to break the laws."

Stephen Hawking is entitled to his views. :)

I meant, how do you multiquote separate people in one post without a lot of copy and pasting? This forum now "alerts" people, so I don't want to go copy pasting everything because it wouldn't alert them properly...
 

FireCat

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Do guns kill people or do people kill people? there are two answers.
Hehe "The gun kills, But your hand fired the gun"

That's an excuse. People are just sadistic.
True. But people use religion as an excuse to oppress, murder and hate? So why is religion so well suited for controlling "Fear tactics" people's minds eh?
 

Dan

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Hehe "The gun kills, But your hand fired the gun"

Please stop trolling this thread Firecat. I'm asking you nicely.

I cannot speak for all religions, but Christianity, (as well as Catholicism and Judaism and most others that I am aware of) teach about love and compassion for one another. The first two, even more so considering that Jesus spends a lot of time showing that humility and humble, meek behavior is appreciated by God. It teaches to love everyone, keep your body healthy, give to charity, not judge others, keep a wife and stay loyal, etc.

You saying
"...people use religion as an excuse to oppress, murder, and hate"
is not in line with the religion at all. It is true that people do horrible things; but if they do it in the name of God, it is definitely not because it is written to do so. Anyone can make a worthy and great thing seem bad by polluting it themselves...
 

Nigerianrulz

suga suga how'd you get so fly?
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The Bible does not prove that God exists any more than the history book in my history class proves that the civil war existed. It is a piece of evidence that I, and many others choose to believe in. If you have been keeping up with my argument, you should know that I do not intend to prove that God exists. I personally believe that there is no other answer than that of God, but I do know when something is impossible to prove. Likewise, I believe that it is impossible to prove that God does NOT exist. I know that the null hypothesis argument puts the burden on me logically; however, I believe that if you break it down far enough, even an atheist has a certain faith in some sort of beginning that cannot ever be answered. The answer gets pushed back as many steps as you would like, but singularity itself requires faith from where I stand.

What I meant about evidence is that the scientific method does not work for historical happenings. History is not rational, and the scientific method cannot be used to uncover it. One must venture to disprove claims that are made and works that have been written in order to uncover the past. The Bible proves nothing if you don't believe that it is really the word of God. If you do believe that it is the word of God, then it proves everything.

Thats a vague comparison, books in history does not date back as far as the bible did, atleast not to my knowledge. I don't single out the possibilities that there is a single intelligent entity that rules the universe but i object to those who must rule out science and all of its possibilities because they believe God is everything. We used to think the Earth was flat... everyone believed it to be, does it means its true?

Scientific method involves digging and surveying and testing historical remains, which helps in proving a lot of historical claims, which is how we found dinosaurs so... Basically you're saying if i picked up Aladin and believe that genies existed it would?

I'm cool if you believe in God but once you start making claims to that God cannot be disproved or it must be the answer is when i will frown and disagree upon.

The question why are only asked to conscious beings, obviously there is a why to everything a conscious mind are doing. You don't ask why is a rock next to a tree because a lot of the times it holds no significance. Maybe it was meant to be there by 'faith' in your eyes but it could also be there by a series of random events. Which is what the string theory proposes, because you mentioned it before I would think you had looked into it and im not gonna elaborate on it.

before i exit with this long post, you didn't answer my question about where did God come from and what about other religion? It seems like science/religion are always science/Christianity.
 
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