[Bobboau]

I was realy young, I could feel god with me and all the stuff you describe, I wouldant alow myself to consiter I was wrong about there being a god because it scared me.

what happened? I started looking at the world objectively, I started questioning myself, I asked unpleasent questions. I came to the realiseation that God is not real.

[Ford Prefect]

I've always been of the stance that "He" and "Him" are not necessarily gender-specific. Just like "mankind" or "man" in the sense of our race. Such is how I've always interpreted it with God, when gender is not specified but a singular pronoun is needed, the language defaults to male. I don't see why God would have or need a gender. Which is why I find it really annoying when people refer to God as "She", simply because then they ARE specifying a gender. A big thanks to the Feminists for that one

Yes, it was more of a rhetorical question. It's universal for cultures to default to the masculine when something needs gender identification. I'm just fascinated by large concepts being linguistically constrained.

God, in my view, is an emotion-- it is an impulse that lies within atheists and theists alike. The difference is that atheists ignore it, and religious people conclude that this instinct is based in reality. Too bad it doesn't matter. Heh heh.

[Bobboau]

yes.

so... can we all now agree that God does not belong in a bioligy class?

[StratComm]

I'm waiting for Stealth's rebuttal, as I haven't seen him online since his last post.  WeatherOp doesn't seem to be pretending that it's valid science.

[WeatherOp]

Originally posted by Bobboau
I was realy young, I could feel god with me and all the stuff you describe, I wouldant alow myself to consiter I was wrong about there being a god because it scared me.

what happened? I started looking at the world objectively, I started questioning myself, I asked unpleasent questions. I came to the realiseation that God is not real.

What happened? You reached the age of acountability, by reaching that age, you lost all the safe feeling you had, and it's because you are not safe in the arms of God like you were.

However, you don't know what it feels like, to be a child of God, like the song says,

"Do you know how it feels to be a child of the king, your heavenly Father owns everything, do you know how it feels to know you are loved, by the one who created the stars up above, do you know how it feels to know your allright when you lay your head on you pillow at night, and to know that it's real, tell me do you know how it feels"

Now while it might seam silly to some, and to others I might be crazy, but I'm glad I'm not. Good night.

[Bobboau]

well, ok, you want to teach that? in a calss? on biology?

[Ford Prefect]

I don't see why not-- it's a lot easier to understand. All that stuff about the Krebs cycle and carbon molecules just confused the hell out of me. I bombed those tests.

[Kamikaze]

I think the debate is focusing more on "does evolution belong in a science classroom?" now. WeatherOp has already conceded that ID doesn't belong in schools. Stealth has avoided the question in wishy-washy ways.

Evolution belongs in science classrooms by definition, it's a scientific theory. I know someone will come by and then argue "Well, scientists still don't know exactly how the first organisms that everything evolved from were" or "There are still chances for evolution to be falsified by new species being discovered", but those arguments are silly. No theory of science purports to be perfect, or explain everything (well, aside from grand unification theories ). Nobody argues that Newton's law of gravity should not be taught just because we've yet to discover gravitrons or gravity waves, that's silly.

BTW: It's like a nasty sabotage attack really. Like "I don't have any rational thought or evidence behind my viewpoint... so let's take the other viewpoint out with pseudo-scientific BS". That's all Stealth's been doing in this thread...

[StratComm]

Bob, can't you see that WeatherOp is using classic ID arguing technique on you?  Instead of actually addressing the issue, they attempt character assassination as a diversionary tactic.  In his case, it's "I've found God and therefore I'm saved, you should find [my God] too [because I can't come up with an answer to your question/reason for your response that doesn't shatter my own world view]".  I've made my stance on that kind of proselytizing before and won't make it again, but it's a completely useless argument 99.9% of the time.  And it pretty much prevents them from accepting any kind of fallacy on their part.

And the only reason I even brought up the question of evolution in the classroom is that it really seems like the logical next step from introducing Intelligent Design into the equation.  Which of course is rubbish, since that would not only involve defining athiesm as a religion, it would be assigning religion-neutral scientific theory to that non-religion.  So it isn't going to happen any time soon.  I've just got to figure out if ID is a last grasp by literalists or if it is the visible head of some deeper conspiracy.

[Bobboau]

you realy want to know what turned me away from religon? you. people of faith. I would see people, things would happen and they would take it in stride without concern because god was protecting them, people spending untill they were $100,000 in debt, I have an aunt who was an alchoholic, when I was a child she was very determined and self asured, but over the years I watched her become dependent upon her religon untill she went insane, litteraly 'seeing visions of mary and her dead mother' insane. a few months ago we were hard into debt, we had to cut back on food to pay bills the school tuition for me my brother and my sister were all due, and I had to give my mom "the stash" to help pay off the bills, I was hard at work trying to get ourselves a workable budget, when all the sudden we got $4,000 from a lawsuit settlement regarding a medicine mom used to take. she said it was a miricle, I thought it was good timeing, I thought we should continue with the budget I had worked out, but no, 'god's takeing care of us son' a month later we were right back were we were. god isn't there he isn't going to help you, you are only going to help your self, and your kin. you can't count on God because god only gets credit after the fact,

I have never seen God in my life, and all the people who claim to seem to be worse from it.

but that's just me.

[StratComm]

Bob, I can actually sympathise with you a lot there.  I too have an aunt who is quite literally crazy (not to the visions point, thankfully) and she is literally the most self-centered person I have ever met to boot.  She's 55 years old, and only two months ago started her first real job.  She relies 100% on the charity of others (when she had nowhere to live, my grandparents BUILT HER A HOUSE.  On veteran's stipends, a very meager farm income, and their life savings and she's still not grateful enough to them to pay the meager rent they oh-so-politely ask).  Everything that goes right in her life (including my Grandparents' gift of a house) is a "gift from God", everything wrong is "God's test" even though she's royally ****ed herself over more times than I can count.

And as someone who is somewhat religious, that saddens me.  I do wish people like that didn't exist because they represent the faith exceptionally poorly.  For every one person they think they've converted, they turn 1000 away.  But then I am in the camp that fully believes that taking care of one's own life is a first order priority, and doing God's work is only possible if your own life is in order.  I believe that God does not interfere in this life, and looking for Him to do so is just wasting your life away.  All the people I know who are comfortable in their faith don't need to go around proclaiming it to the world.  The way I see it, Christianity really boils down to two things: be good to your fellow man, and try to encourage others, by word and example to do the same.  The rest is philosophical and internal to one's own person, and so my beliefs there have nothing to do with how I interact with others.  Those who claim to love the Lord and still wrong other people are not keeping the faith in any meaningful way.  I'm sure I'll get flamed for saying that, but it's the closest thing to universal truth that I've found in my life so I'll stand by it unless I personally experience anything to discredit it.

And since my beliefs are my beliefs, I don't want them falsely presented as science.  I want people to reach their faith in their own way, at their own time, and with their own interpretation.  And really, I can't see how an honest Christian could want otherwise.  I want to get that out there before the religious bunch comes in here and starts making this personal.

EDIT:The origin of the universe - and by that I mean whatever cosmic event left us with gobs of differentiated matter and energy - is a philosophical debate as much as it is a scientific one, but it really has nothing to do with ID or evolution.  And it is only there that science is still murky enough to even think of presenting students with a "balanced" viewpoint if you're in to that sort of thing (though I favor the "we don't know" approach myself).   I should probably clarify why I think it's important to share my religious beliefs.  Since apparently "it's not science", which is the painfully obvious response, isn't effective, I felt I needed to clarify just why I vehemently disagree with ID in general and especially with its role as an attempted displacer of evolutionary theory.  It goes against my religion to support it.  I hope I've done that satisfactorily, but I'm sure I'm still going to have to defend my statements anyway.

[Flipside]

Sounds more to me like Bob is a very lucid dreamer (Yes, lucid dreams can continue whilst you are awake) who had trouble controlling it when he was young. Do you remember your dreams nowadays? I used to have very similar experiences and my mind's self-defence was such that I can never ever remember my dreams these days.

[Black Wolf]

Originally posted by Stealth

There's your evidence...  the fossil record, probably THE MOST ACCURATE keeper of history to DATE, doesn't agree with evolution.

what's the response to that?

The response is quite simple - you don't know your palaeontology. There are dozens of transitional fossils, from simple animals (the best documented is the transition from regular to irregular echinoids), from more complex animals (as I mentioned above) and from simple to more complex animals. You can find these in the various links people have posted, on wikipedia (the Cambrian Explosion article is a very good one) and in textbooks. Go look for them. Stop spouting dogma and try to see the science. Then, if you still disagree with the evidence, come back and tell us why.

This is really frustrating because I know you're wrong. I've seen some of these transitional fossils with my own eyes, touched them with my own hands. They're there if you're willing to ask a few questions and actually look for the answers.

[Black Wolf]

Originally posted by Stealth
a couple of fossils?  even the fossils you mentioned are highly controversial, and the subject of many discussions and arguments to their validity.  take the first one for instance.  could EASILY be a dinosaur with feathers.  why does that have to be the "evolution" of a dinosaur to a bird?

Are they highly controversial, or are you making that up? Did you look them up and try to find out about them, or did you just assume? You don't actually have to answer that because I know that you did not bother looking into them, because, apart from Archaeopteryx, neither of the two fossils I mentioned are in any way controversial, and the controversy over archaopteryx is far less significant than creationists make it out o be. Also note that those are just examples of long, much more comprehensive chains of evolutionary progress between the two end member groups. moreover, there are dozens of other transitions documented in the fossil record that I haven't mentioned.

As for Archaeopteryx, the answer is quite simple. It has the skeleton, teeth and bony tail of a dinosaur, and the feathers of a bird. Before it, there are more primitive feathered reptiles. After it, there are more advanced feathered reptiles and true birds. Where is the problem in that?

Originally posted by Stealth
look at the coelacanth.  remember that extraordinary fish?  claimed for a long time to be a fish developing limbs, that lived millions of years ago.  until just a few years ago they found one living off the coast of Durban.......... a fish that had "limb" looking appendages, but obviously was not the cause of evolution, since "millions of years later", the fish hadn't changed physically at all, and they're still living, in our day.  

[/b]

Nobody ever claimed the Coelocanth was developing limbs. The last Coelocanth fossils disappear at the end of the Cretaceous, hundreds of millions of years after limbs were already well developed. It's a member of the group of fish known as lobe fins, and the group evolved limbs all those millions of years ago, not the individual.

Originally posted by Stealth
or better yet, explain to me why suddenly LIFE (<--keyword.  not "simple multi-celled organisms) erupted at the beginning of the cambrian period.  NOTE: didn't evolve over millions of years, but erupted.
 

Simple fact is that it didn't - check out the wikipedia article - the development of sexual reproduction led to an invertebrate diversification that lasted between thirty and sixty million years. It's nothing at all like the "explosion" it's made out to be.

[Bobboau]

[edit]this was in responce to flipside, I sort of went off on just a tiny little a tangent, so feel free to ignore this post unless you want to here more about how fuct up i am. it has absolutely nothing to do with the topic[/edit]

I remember dreams, but there usualy mundain or not extrodanary enough for me to keep them for more than a few minutes.

funny thing, none of those events happened after I fell asleep, I was quite awake. and well the actual funny thing was, I actualy wanted nightmares, I thought they were cool, like a 3d first person horror movie. I had a couple reacuring ones, best one I can remember to this day I refered to as the 'devil stone rock' (named it when I was like 3 so give me a break) what I can remember basicly, my family went to a house for some party or something and I got seperated (went exploreing) I'd go through this laberinth like house untill I came to a room with ghosts in it, they told me to do something or something and I did it, and eventualy I'd make my way back to my parents who were outside in the bakc on a patio with some other people and there were a few large rocks behind one of wich I would realise the devil was hideing behind and then I'd wake up. I'd always try to go back to sleep to try to figure out what the hell was going on, but I could never get further than that. there was also a dream I had were a giant demon was eating the moon (and all sorts of other apochtoliptic stuff, but the moon eating was the only consistant theam). and a dream I had were the sky was red and I looked up and I could see all the planets aligned, a feeling of dread would overcome me and I'd hear or sence a loud noise or something and turn to face it and then woke up (from this I jokeingly came to prophisise that the world would end on may 14th 2000, because shortly after I started haveing this dream I say a star gazer eppisode that said all the planets would allign on that date and affter seeing that epp I never had that dream again)
lots of variants of me running around my childhood neghborhood and finding things changed or old things that I hadn't found when I lived there or there being some omenus 'thing' most memorable was basicly a floating manta ray type thing that left a trail of darkness.
a bunch of weird dreams with lots of bizar sadistic and sexual things going on (for instance a small woman doing mechanical backflips naked contorting herself every time she landed while a dog licked her genitals. I remember wakeing up and thinking: what... the... ... FAUCK!? )

there have been very few dreams that truely frightened me, though there was one such dream not to long ago, I actualy remember the date, august 8th, I remember it because that was the day befor a girl I had been in love with for the last two years was suposed to be getting back from a trip. in the dream the girl was over at my house (and the setting seemed to change from my house to my grandma's house a lot at random for the most part, but it seemed when we were inside it was my house and when outside it was grandma's house) we were sitting in the liveing room and she had an ice pack because she had pulled a muscle or something while gone, we were talking about something, when a bunch of cop cars whent running by the house and pulled someone(s) over at the printing shop about 100(ish) meters from my house (this happens on occasion) she got freaked and wanted to go home, I told her there was nothing to worry about but she insisted, so I showed her out and she got in her car as I walked back in (the setting had now changed to my grandma's house) my grandma one of my uncle and my two closest (see them on rare occasion) cousins asked me were she was, I said she wanted to go home, then though she might still be in her car, I wen't back to find her and it looked like she was still there, untill I looked back to tell them she was there and I saw them all running away from me and around the house (wich relitive to the orientation of grandma's house was in the same direction as the printing shop) the girl was in front of them all and I figured they she was going to run around and I went to cut her off, as she came around the house I went to grab her, she had a look of 'aw you got me' and I was just about to put my arms around her when (and here is were it starts getting freaky) my arms got pulled together by some unseen force, I stoped and thought "hmm that was weird" and tried again this time not only did my arms get pulled together but I got pulled off into the sky by this dark sadowy (kind of hary) looking figure wich then let me go and I woke up. first time I woke up in a blind panic (my arms were crossed together BTW). and I was disturbed for the better part of the day. that girl never called me btw, I didn't hear from her for more than a month (a month and a day to be presice, on september 10th) untill she called me and told me in a 5 minute 12 second (phone history, I'm not that obsesed) conversation that, she moved to Chicago for school and she wouldn't be able to talk to me anymore (untill she gets back), I tried haveing a conversation with her about how things were and what she was doing, she said that she knew some girls up there, and mentioned someone named Cody, and upon asking who Cody was she said 'oh, you're kidding you know who he is', and I'm like "no, that's someone I've never met", I hear silence and the phone cuts out. confused I call her back, and she very quickly (almost as in a panic) tells me that she can't use her phone and she'll call me when she comes back into town, and I also hear that she has a 'frend' up there that she's been visiting all summer (wich would explain why I could never get her to do anything) when she had been telling me that she was going up there to look at schools. now honestly I had never told her (well that isn't completely true, I had but I think she thought I was jokeing) how I felt, and every time I tried bringing it up she was all "oh, I don't want a boyfrend" so I didn't push the issue, but she had to know I was constantly showering her with gifts and stuff. every time I was about to give up and move on she'd say something or do something that made me feel like a jackass for consitering it. so... ehm... yeah... no religion in the science class...

[StratComm]

Originally posted by Black Wolf


You can find these in the various links people have posted, on wikipedia (the Cambrian Explosion article is a very good one) and in textbooks. Go look for them. Stop spouting dogma and try to see the science. Then, if you still disagree with the evidence, come back and tell us why.

You know, I'd guess that the Wikipedia has very good coverage of all of the common ID reasonings.  I may have to do a little digging.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by WeatherOp


Bob....

1 Kings 19:11-12

11:And, behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the LORD; but the LORD was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the LORD was not in the earthquake:

12:And after the earthquake a fire; but the LORD was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.

Aldos Instinctive Response
1-1:  God does not exist but still exists in social groups due to the release of pleasurable neurochemicals during religious worship.
1-2: If God exists, he doesn't seem to do much nowadays
1-3: Nor is he very good at documenting himself
1-4: plus it would be a bit daft if God existed, 'gave' us these highly developed brains, and then expected us never to use them.
1-5: Man could have easily created God as God could have created Man

However, the issue of belief is beside the point.  So long as you aren't suggesting that ID should be taught as science, I don't really object to you having Christian or otherwise beliefs, even if I disagree with the content or reasoning of them.  

But I think it'd be a bit obvious that a belief fits none of the requirements for science.  We have had hundreds of thousands of religions throughout time, after all, and they can't all be right.  My point about bible literalism would be that, it's only divine from the POW of someone who believes it is already.

 From an anthropological view, it's a book which was written by man, to satisfy the societal 'needs' perceieved by those men.  So we have instructions about battlements on houses and not wearing mixed cloth, bits where killing of pregnant women is condoned (apparently there are several lines about 'slicing the belly open' to paraphrase), the earth has 4 corners, a politically motivated allegory between Nero and the Devil forming Revelations, exagerrated folklore such as forming the Flood mythology, etc - so it's basically hyperbole intended to convince the population to act in a particular way, using a 'supreme being' and the promise of an intangible reward (heaven) as leverage.  

So whilst you can cite it as some form of proof.... it isn't.  It's no more proof than 2001 is of the existence of aliens.  And to a Muslim, Sikh, etc it's probably not regarded as literally true either (not to mention we know parts are not the literal truth, such as the obvious value of pi example, so we know the bible is not infallible).  Because of this - even ignoring the complete lack of evidence behind - you can't teach one specific creationist theory as 'science' without having to teach all, as they are all equally merited (and equally lacking in evidence...).  

And you can't teach 'ID' as a theory because it doesn't have any form.  There are no answers, just a set of criticisms aimed at evolution which often wilfully ignore or misconstrue facts and explanations (sometimes, as evidenced here, 'because they are complicated'), sometimes supported by deliberate misquotation.  Not only does it not have any characteristics redolent of science, it actually seeks to destroy science by ignoring the facts behind evolutionary theory - ID is, in effect, anti-science.  And in that it's no less invalid than phrenology or the flat earth theory.

I'll admit that reading up on background stuff to this thread - particularly bits from the Bible - has actually convinced me to go with the aetheism route rather than my previous agnostic state.

[Bobboau]

Originally posted by aldo_14
I'll admit that reading up on background stuff to this thread - particularly bits from the Bible - has actually convinced me to go with the aetheism route rather than my previous agnostic state.

yay! welcome to the path brother, you've been entered into the unholy lottery, and you'll be getting your gift basket sometime next week.

[karajorma]

*Points and laughs at WeatherOp*

You lose.

I asked the proponents of ID to explain it as a scientific theory and all the replies on the thread ended up simply saying "look at the bible" (A book open to interpretation and therefore not scientific).

I just hope the court case that started this discussion goes in exactly the same direction cause the moment the propenents of ID start having to say look at the bible for an explaination of the theory  it will get thrown out as being against the seperation of church and state.

[Flipside]

Hmmmmmm... You certainly have interesting dreams Bob, I suspect you had a very religious upbringing (I was dragged along to Sunday school then Church every week) or your parents were the sort of people who invented monsters for every childhood habit, like the scissor-monster for little boys who suck their thumbs etc, parents sometimes don't realise how impressionable young children are, or how incredibly powerful their imagination is compared to adults. The one about the planets does sound incredibly Biblical in origin.

Come to think of it, it's probably the fact that I hate having fear used to control me, whether it be fear of bombs or fear of holy retribution that led to me being non-christian (sort of spiritual, more a case of 'I'll find out when it happens'). It seems to me that 'Worship me or spend an eternity in pain and torture' was always a rather extreme angle to use on 7 year olds.