[Ford Prefect]

Religion is not being bashed here. We're bashing people's inability to reconcile their religion with plain truth. You can go around saying 2+2=5, but it takes a lot of nerve to tell people they're intolerant bigots when they dismiss you as being plain wrong. All the faith in the world isn't going to change the fact that you're ignoring the obvious.

Annihilation, if you believe that the earth is 6000 years old and that dinosaurs and humans walked together, you pretty much are a fundamentalist. As for why we care, it's because they're trying to force their laughable worldview on the rest of society by forcing it into the educational system.

[Janos]

Originally posted by Annihilation

Why should I care if someone believes earth is 6000 years old and people and dinosaur walked together. If that makes them happy more power to them. I think it is idiotic but I'll not lose my time bashing them and their religion. I know good religious people and good atheists and F***** up fanatics, both religious and atheists. I don't give a **** what a person believes unless they are ****ing fundamenlists or psychos.

Because arguing with them is funnier that just sitting around in your own faeces?

[JR2000Z]

Originally posted by Ford Prefect
Religion is not being bashed here. We're bashing people's inability to reconcile their religion with plain truth. You can go around saying 2+2=5, but it takes a lot of nerve to tell people they're intolerant bigots when they dismiss you as being plain wrong. All the faith in the world isn't going to change the fact that you're ignoring the obvious.

[WeatherOp]

Here is two reasons that I think evolution is the stupidest thing man has thought of.


1. Evolution relies on chance. By chance the big bang created the universe. It says something about the universe being crushed into something the size of a pencil and bang it created everything. One problem, if it is the beggining there was nothin in the universe. And about evolution, lets say the thing, don't matter what evoloved, ok, maybe a 1 in a 1,000,000,000,000 chance, now whats the "Chance in another one evoloving in maybe 2 to 4 months of its life to mate with, and in the billion years it finally hapens they mate and create another. How long would it take to create all the animals there are today? and why have we not evoloved more, our minds gotten better, but the people back then built the huge buildings and they even forcasted the wet season and stored up food in famine. And finally about the world, I read somewhere if the earth was 1% closer to the sun we would fry, 1% farther away we would freeze, leaving to chance ain't it.


2. man has a habit of trying his best to get rid of God. But he can never do it. He trys to create things like God, but he can't. If you look at the cpu's we have today, there powerful, but they don't conpare nothing to the Brain we have in our heads.And we have been looking for that "missing link" and we claim that we have found it, but later on after they study it they find out that it is ether a man or a monkey never both.

Now wether any of you listen to me, is up to you. If some of you really belive we come from a thing like a monkey, they can be you great granparents, But they ain't mine.

[Xavier Lazarus]

Ooooohahahahahaha
OOOOHAHAHAHAHA

Let's face it, if I don't laugh in the face of that, I'll cry.

[Grey Wolf]

Let's see....
1. The Big Bang concept has nothing to do with the theory of evolution.
2. The first life on earth would be very simplistic, and therefore asexual, preventing the need of another to reproduce.

[Flipside]

Edicarians.... sounds like something out of Star Trek really, no orifices whatsoever, no mouth, no anus, they hung around for a few million years before triloblasts turned up

[WeatherOp]

Ok, lets say your right, but they will evolove so that they can'treproduce that way anymore.

[Grey Wolf]

I'd respond to that comment, but I'm still trying to figure out what it's actually saying....

[Liberator]

Hey WeatherOp:


Finally managed to make the jump, eh?

[WeatherOp]

Yeah, I thought I would see what was over here.

[Flipside]

Oh boy. I can see chats getting nice and lively round here

[Liberator]

Here's the trick, Big Bang Theory and Evolution stem from the same mindset:  "There is no God".  

That's why they get talked about in the same breath.  I agree facts are facts, and here's a fact:  We have no reliable records from more than 10-12 millennia ago, and those are sketchy at best.  We can have absolutely no idea, no matter how good the math is, how the Universe began without actually developing a Time Machine and going back to see for ourselves.  The same is true of Evolution Theory, we can't know how we got here unless we travel far enough back to find out how or why.

All these arguments do is serve to divide us as a species.  I'm one day, one way or another, the argument will be settled.  However, there are aspects of life that science is all it's complexity can't explain and isn't equipped to explain, because according to science it can't or shouldn't be that way.  This is where religion comes in.  It's no mistake that religion has slowly moved back from primacy in our daily lives, as science has explained different aspects of life and the universe, religion didn't have to anymore.  But, for every answer, a new question and every question a new aspect of religion has risen.  People need to have things explained in life, when science can't do it, they turn to religion.

I belive, and this is my personal belief, there is an almighty, all knowing, personal God that created the universe at sometime in the past.  He set the rules and conditions into place that the Universe operates on.  He loves his creations in a way that no mortal being can comprehend, and as such has set paths before us to lead us to where we will be at both our happiest and greatest.  He has given us the ability to understand most of creation, but it is so vast that we will never be able to comprehend it all.

[Taristin]

Originally posted by Liberator
Here's the trick, Big Bang Theory and Evolution stem from the same mindset:  "There is no God".  

That's bull****. What about all of the people who believe God caused the Big Bang?  Or that Evolution was God's plan all along?

[Flipside]

Actually, the aim of science isn't anything to do with a God, be it proving or disproving it's existence.

Some people interpret that as an attack.

[Black Wolf]

Originally posted by WeatherOp
Here is two reasons that I think evolution is the stupidest thing man has thought of.


1. Evolution relies on chance. By chance the big bang created the universe. It says something about the universe being crushed into something the size of a pencil and bang it created everything. One problem, if it is the beggining there was nothin in the universe. And about evolution, lets say the thing, don't matter what evoloved, ok, maybe a 1 in a 1,000,000,000,000 chance, now whats the "Chance in another one evoloving in maybe 2 to 4 months of its life to mate with, and in the billion years it finally hapens they mate and create another. How long would it take to create all the animals there are today? and why have we not evoloved more, our minds gotten better, but the people back then built the huge buildings and they even forcasted the wet season and stored up food in famine. And finally about the world, I read somewhere if the earth was 1% closer to the sun we would fry, 1% farther away we would freeze, leaving to chance ain't it.


2. man has a habit of trying his best to get rid of God. But he can never do it. He trys to create things like God, but he can't. If you look at the cpu's we have today, there powerful, but they don't conpare nothing to the Brain we have in our heads.And we have been looking for that "missing link" and we claim that we have found it, but later on after they study it they find out that it is ether a man or a monkey never both.

Now wether any of you listen to me, is up to you. If some of you really belive we come from a thing like a monkey, they can be you great granparents, But they ain't mine.

Oh dear.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

I'm going to go through this point by point and explain it. You will probably choose not to listen. But if I don't, I'll feel bad that I knew someone with beliefs like this existed, and I did not even try to enlighten them.

So, in order...

The big bang is not evolution. At all. How the hell people can confuse cosmology and astrophysics with biology is beyond me. They are two of the most widely separated fields of sciences yo could possibly get. The big bang has nothing to do with evolution. Please - if you take nothing else away from reading this post, take that.

Biogenesis - the initial formation of life - is the first point at which evolution may come into play. The first "life" probably consisted of extremely primitive RNA like protein chains that self replicated. That's all. Just primitive chemicals making primitive chemicals. Just like modern day bacteria, cyanobacteria and other asexual organisms, they didn't need to mate. Sexual reproduction took billions of years to evolve.

Our minds. Ok. I'm not 100% sure where you're going with this, but I think you're comparing our brains with those of the monument builders of the past, i.e. the Egyptians, the Britons, the Maltese temple builders, the Babylonians etc. etc. Once again, you're not applying evolution in the correct context. Homo Sapiens Sapiens has existed for about 300 000 years if memory serves. The four or five thousand years that separates us today from the Great Pyramids at Giza is nothing on an evolutionary scale of time. A mere grain of sand through the hourglass. Genetically, we were identical to those people. Culturally and technologically we've improved, but only through the gradual process of learning from the past and adapting or innovating old procedures and knowledge.

The position of the earth. Yes, in all likelyhood, if the earth moved that much on it's orbit, things would change on the planet. 1% is rahther a lot when you're talking about the scale of astronomical distances. But the reason we survive so well here is because we have adapted, over the course of billions of years, through evolution, to the earths current position. Had it been that 1% further out, different organisms would have evolved who, theoretically, could have been sitting at their computers going "You know, if the earth was 1% further in, we'd fry to death".

Comparing the brain to CPUs. Err... Just because something is good, as the human brain is, doesn't provide any evidence either way. The crux of human evolution has been the growth in complexity of the brain, o get it to the point it's at now. CPUs don't do anything like the jobs the brain does - they're designed to do mathematics, really really quickly. Our brain is designed to do a totally different and far more varied range of tasks.

The missing link. You're misunderstanding the concept of "Monkey" (Which should be primate, more accurately) and "Human". These are, at best, arbitrarily assigned groups by taxonomists. Biologically, there is no true "monkey", to use your term, and there is no true "Human" either. The very concept of the missing link is foolish - it's basically requesing palaeontologists find a half ape, half human. That's not the way evolution works, and represents a serious lack of understanding. What we have is a somewhat patchy (up until the last few million years anyway) record of gradual evolution from apes to what we consider modern humans. If you date them and arrange them in order, there are no missing links. Evoluion doesn;t need them - it's got the entire chain right there. Tis fossil is representative of the last common ancestor between Apes and Humans - both groups evolved along the line of this animal, or something very much like it. What more did you want?

[Bobboau]

Originally posted by Liberator
Here's the trick, Big Bang Theory and Evolution stem from the same mindset:  "There is no God".  

no they stem from the mindset "without useing any preconcived notions and useing only what we can see today what can we figure out as to how things happened"

We can have absolutely no idea, no matter how good the math is, how the Universe began without actually developing a Time Machine and going back to see for ourselves.  The same is true of Evolution Theory, we can't know how we got here unless we travel far enough back to find out how or why.

we have an idea, maybe it's wrong, but we have an idea, that's the whole pointwe don't know, we can't, but we're trying to figure out as best we can

However, there are aspects of life that science is all it's complexity can't explain and isn't equipped to explain, because according to science it can't or shouldn't be that way.

not sure what you are talking about

I belive, and this is my personal belief, there is an almighty, all knowing, personal God that created the universe at sometime in the past.  He set the rules and conditions into place that the Universe operates on.  He loves his creations in a way that no mortal being can comprehend, and as such has set paths before us to lead us to where we will be at both our happiest and greatest.  He has given us the ability to understand most of creation, but it is so vast that we will never be able to comprehend it all.


I have no problem with that, and totaly respect it. now I know the word 'respect' gets tossed around around as a means to change the subject, but I realy do, I'm not going to tell you that you are wrong, becase I don't know for absolute certanty that I am right, I just happen to think that what I beleive is a lot more likely that what you believe. I not only have no desier to force you to change what you belive or the way you lead your life I will fight to alow you to continue, even though I think you are dead wrong. but consequently I also will fight you if I feel you are trying to force your thinking or way of life on other people

[Flipside]

I will walk the wire here and try to balance two equations.

Since I have seen no evidence to the contrary, I am willing to acknowledge the theory that a God created the universe and set it into motion, whereas physics set in, and with any system, after a while Chaos starts to set in, it's one of those laws of physics.

I refuse, however to hold myself in such an exulted position as to believe that this entire universe, billions upon billions of light years in size, aeons old, was created for the sole purpose of giving us somewhere to stand. That, to my mind, is an insult to the creation, be it natural or deified.

So if I, who believes in evolution am going to acknowledge that I don't know the answer to all our questions, and that God still hasn't been dismissed as a Primal Force of some kind. Who's going to acknowledge the evidence for evolution?

[Black Wolf]

Originally posted by Liberator

That's why they get talked about in the same breath.  I agree facts are facts, and here's a fact:  We have no reliable records from more than 10-12 millennia ago, and those are sketchy at best.

What about the fossil record? In some ways, it's far more reliable than written records - the fossil record was not written by the winners, it wasn't coloured by perception or preexisting beliefs. It just is, as the animal died. Sure, it can be fragmentary, and occasionally bits and pieces are altered by unusual circumstances, but by ad large, it all fits together cohesively and neatly.

And it provides ridiculously strong evidence for evolution. Take Echinoids for example. There are two great groups in the fossil record - irregular and regular. The regular echinoids evolved first, and we have a very clear evolutionar history for those things turning into irregular echinoids. Their mouth and anus moved around their body from top/bottom to front/back over a period of millions of years, their plates changed in composition and shape, again over a periond of millions of years, and all the other changes gradually occured. If you lay out the dozen or so fossil species we have of this transition in chronological order, the gradual change is impossible to miss. It's the same with trilobites, horses, dinosaurs, humans - anything we have a decently complete fossil record for. Gradual change always occurs, always in line with radiological dating methods. They support each other, thousands and thousands of times across the fossil record. How can that be ignored?

[Bobboau]

hmm... did libby invite a frend
is there some creationist forum he belongs to who keep a watchful eye on us nasty atheist pegans?
well come one come all, just ask one question at a time and we'll be more than happy to explane anything you don't get.

would you like to know how a lifeless planet could spontaniusly spawn life?