ViSion said:
Part of the problem here is that you haven’t thoroughly read through all the previous posts. Some of your answers are in those posts. However, I don’t blame you for not doing so, since this thread is extremely long.
--Qualthwar turn about is fair play so if:
1)In a chemical reaction, atoms (and hence mass) are neither created nor destroyed.
2)Energy can be neither created nor destroyed but can be changed from one form to another.--
Number 2 is correct. Number 1 isn’t. Atoms die. For example, a neutron has a life expectancy. In a neutron star, atoms are crushed and protons and electrons are pushed together to form neutrons. The other thing is we don’t know how atoms change when they fall into a black hole.
--That would mean admitting there is something beyond our known laws and scope of understanding, an intelligent GOD if you will.—
Sorry, but if you’d ever taken a logic class, you’d know that “A” doesn’t necessarily equal “B”. Just because we don’t have the answer to something doesn’t mean we should believe it’s the result of a god. I mean, come on: history has shown us this mistake time and time again. Eskimos, as I mentioned in an earlier post, thought that the Northern Lights were something a god was controlling. I used the Eskimos as an example because they maintained this belief until recently. By recently, I mean relative to other beliefs. It wasn’t until we discovered the Van Allen Belt and had some solid proof to show these people that they realized the Northern Lights were merely a product of charged partials streaming down the magnetic field lines of the earth and hitting the atmosphere. What’s interesting is that some Eskimos still think it’s a god causing the lights, from what I’ve read.
Before the Eskimos, there were a myriad of other beliefs that had a god as the central character. The impetus for these unfounded beliefs were unexplained events. To suggest a god is the root source of something because “something is beyond our laws and scope of understanding” is to fall prey to the belief that if it cannot be explained, there must be a god behind it. Some of us see the fallacies related to this way of thinking and have evolved away from a blind faith that comforts our lack of knowledge. Obviously, some people still cling to the old ways and insist the unexplainable implies a divine being.
--Qualthwar I am sorry to say it seems as though your perception of religion is an affront to your being. Yet apparently you have given up one religion in lieu of another.—
Why would my religious views be an insult to my being? What’s insulting to me is that other’s think I should be as gullible as they are. I should herd myself right off a cliff just as they do. I’ve given up on religion because it’s blind faith. There is no proof for the existence of a god, no evidence to show us god created all that we see. Moreover, religion can be picked apart; religious people have to struggle to maintain a coherent justification for the stories of the bible, and or their beliefs.
--at best the theory of evolution is a hypothesis at its base it is a religion.—
Look, I'll say this one more time: Religion and Evolution have at their heart the same innate problem. That is, how could something come from nothing? I’m not going to listen to people when they tell me god has always been; I’m not herding myself off a cliff with the other cattle. God has to be something. Where did that something come from? Did someone make god? If so, where did that something come from? Is god made up of something? Well, of course, if there’s a god, god is made of something. It may not be atoms or whatnot, but if god made Adam in his likeness, maybe people believe god is made up of the same stuff we’re made from. In any case, where did that something come from that makes up god?
The same problem plagues evolution. Where did the pinpoint of energy come from that initiated the Big Bang? That energy had to come from somewhere. Perhaps it was burped into existence from another universe. Another universe seeded our universe. Where did that parent universe come from?
--I find it curious that evolutionist hypothesizes that modern man has existed for 100,000 years but has only about has about 5,000 years of accountable history. Not to be funny or anything but am I to believe modern man was stuck on stupid for 95,000 years. Well I am sorry to tell you that the Bible is more in sync with the facts than your prescribed theory.—
We have cave drawings that are tens of thousands of years old. No, the bible isn’t in sync when it implies mankind began 6,000 years ago. You are sort of right in that man was stuck on stupid for awhile, but that’s not exactly how things went. For one thing, learning is exponential. You’ve probably heard of the learning curve, and the “curve” part refers to the fact that learning is exponential, not linear. Our knowledge builds on itself, and the more we know, the faster we learn. This explains some of what you’re implying.
But let’s look deeper into the matter: Early man was not “stupid” by any means. I’m talking about man 50,000 years ago. It’s a common misconception that cavemen were pretty dumb, but today, we know better. The Clovis spear points that man made to kill animals were extremely complicated. Scientists have practiced making these spear points and have learned much in doing so. Not only does it take considerable applied practice to become proficient at creating these points, but we now know that it took early man thousands of calculations to strike the rocks in such a way as to make a successful point. You and I would look like fools alongside these early men if we tried to make these points side-by-side with them; they would put us to shame. It would take us a long time to get as good as they are at what seems to be a simple task. This took brains, brains, brains, and more brains. These Clovis points helped us to hunt meat, and meat is like rocket fuel for the brain. It helped our brains to grow larger and develop complexity. This made us smarter.
The other thing about all this is related to an earlier post of mine. Scientists now have in their hands strong evidence that mankind was almost completely wiped out. A bottleneck in human evolution occurred. There was a huge volcano, a super volcano, that exploded about 74,000 years ago. The estimates are that between 1,000 and about 10,000 people were left on earth. The others died off for various reasons, but the important part of this is that some died off well after the explosion because they didn’t have the mental capacity to cope with their environment. This left a relatively higher number of smarter people on the earth. That’s important because smart people are better able to teach others. This makes the learning curve even more prominent. All these things I’ve just mentioned help to explain your views on stupid man, but he really wasn’t as stupid as you might think.
--Lucy! Is that the best you can do after millions of years of evolution? That australopithecine was nothing more than an ape.—
This is the problem I run into with religious people. They tend to take a generalized approach to a very complex situation. Lucy is the tip of the iceberg. Many religious people don’t want to spend the time doing the research to find out the “whole” story. Lucy was a special ape; one of the first examples that we have that an ape walked upright. You either understand the significance of this, or you don’t. Upright posture changes everything. It reduces our exposure to the sun, thus allowing us to walk farther between water holes and discover more resources. It allows us to see farther ahead as we walk, making it easier to spot resources and prey, and to avoid being prey. It frees up our extremely nimble hands so we have more time for tool-making. We can tell by Lucy’s pelvis that she walked upright.
Lucy isn’t the only example of early upright posture. Moreover, there are many intermediate forms that demonstrate the evolutionary form of man to modern times. You try and attack one example, with no substantial argument, I might add, and neglect the multitude of other examples that substantiate Lucy’s roots. It doesn’t surprise me that religious people do this, because ignorance is the root of religion. One opinion from a researcher is in no way a convincing argument. With practically any theory you or I could cite as an example, there are always going to be people who do not believe in the theory and will go to lengths to prove it wrong. There are people who think we didn’t land on the moon; people who think, today mind you, that the earth is flat. Flat!! They fiddle with numbers and the like to try and prove their ideas. Come back when a large majority of people think Lucy is a conglomeration of parts. Oh, and maybe addresses all the other fossils we’ve found to date as well, since they have merit.
--"Adult chimps and gorillas, for instance, have elongated faces, heavy brow ridges, powerful jaws, and small braincases in relation to overall skull and other characteristic proportions. Baby apes have flat faces, rounded braincases, light brow ridges, proportionately smaller jaws, and many other bodily features strikingly like human beings."-*R. Milner, Encyclopedia of Evolution (1990), p. 325. –
I don’t see your point. Yes, humans and apes look similar. Humans descended from apes; they are going to look similar.
--"Eleven human skeletons, the earliest known human remains in the Western hemisphere, have recently been dated by this new accelerator mass spectrometer technique. All eleven were dated at about 5,000 radiocarbon years or less! If more of the claimed evolutionary ancestors of man are tested and are also found to contain carbon-14, a major scientific revolution will occur and thousands of textbooks will become obsolete."-Walter T. Brown, In the Beginning (1989), p. 95.—
Again, give me masses. One person’s claim, a thousand claims, is nothing if you weigh that against 50 million claims. Show me where the majority of the scientific population agrees with these findings and that will have some merit. Show me repeatable results.
--OK Qualthwar you wanted an answer concerning why GOD changed his mind about brothers marrying, sisters, etc... Well this problem was actually addressed and answered by Jesus.—
You’re falling back into the old ways again. You can’t quote scripture to me and expect that to have any impact. I’ve already mentioned in my previous posts that I don’t believe the consolidated stories of the bible to be anything but a creation of man’s thoughts. The stories lack clout.
--Qualthwar just out of curiosity why would you wish for a Sunday school teacher to be in this forum—
Because during one of the posts, someone (you in another life) said that a Sunday school teacher could tackle our evolutionary arguments. Not in those exact words, but that was the gist of it.
--Then again you point to stories here and there and say, see the bible writers just stole this story from this group of people.--
Do the research. Instead of spending your time with your nose in the bible, do the research. Don’t be afraid to do the research in an unbiased way. I’m not going to do it for you. You’re not cheating off my paper. The stories are there; Gilgamesh is real. Stories similar to Gilgamesh are real. Put in the time, if you dare.
--Qualthwar you say you are a scientist, well as a scientist what is the probability of a hundred amino acids aligning properly to create a simple protein?—
Same thing, different day: Religious people oversimplifying things. The probability that it will happen within a day, not good. That probability that it happen within a week, not good, but the odds get better. In a thousand years… not good, but the odds get better. You are still living in a world that’s 6,000 years old. Of course you can’t understand how such things could happen. If you live in a world that’s billions of years old, suddenly probabilities become possibilities. If you throw a rock at a tiny target 40 meters away hidden behind a rock, you have a much better chance hitting it with 4.6 billion attempts compared to 6,000 attempts.
--Christians are at honest enough to admit that they base their part of their convictions on faith. Evolutionists should at least be honest with themselves and admit the same.—
There is a fundamental difference between the two. At its heart, science has the Scientific Method. Science is checks and balances. When one person comes up with something, others do tests to see if there’s something there or not. Results have to be repeatable. Results have to hold up against intense scrutiny. Scientists make an effort to disprove something before it’s widely accepted. Yes, scientists have a measure of faith in their work.
Religion, on the other hard, relies sorely on faith. Religious leaders don’t tell their congregation to come back next Sunday and find flaws in the bible. They don’t say to objectively consider stories of the bible or teachings of christ and try to prove these stories wrong.
Of course, I admit science and religion are both based on faith. My earlier statement about religion and evolution having the same problem, how does something begin from nothing, demonstrates faith on both parts. However, as I’ve said before, given the choice, I’m going to side with tangible evidence as opposed to some blind faith that makes no sense and can be picked apart.
--Pointing out differences between religious groups is one thing, but where have you proven or even attempted to prove that it is the Bible that is responsible for the confusion. Besides the fact that is where you decided the blame shoud be.—
You’re missing the point. That fact that there is confusion about the bible is the whole issue. I can’t see some all-powerful god wanting people to know how he/she/it feels about things, allowing such ambiguity to take place as it does within the bible, or within established religious belief systems. Something so powerful should not be subject to such pitfalls.
--You keep attempting to explain away religious ignorance as biblical teaching.—
Ignorance just means that you don’t know something about a particular subject. Many, and I mean many, religious people seem to prefer sticking their heads inside a bible, listening to sermons, and don’t make much, if any, attempt to go outside these bounds and learn about the physical world around them. That posture breeds ignorance.
--To say this only shows your unfamiliarity of the subject matter. Maybe you would be better off not making blanketed statements which are false. To say that the bible is responsible for the acts of evil and misguided men has no basis in truth. To say that all religious organizations explicitly follow and biblical doctrine is false. To say that the Bible was written to confuse everyone is a ridiculous notion.—
I’m not sure if this is directed at me or not. I’m not sure because I don’t see how it specifically applies to me. I’ve said before that I’ve known many religious people and they are good people; not evil as your statement suggests. I’ve never said that all religious organizations use the bible. In fact, I’ve mentioned religions that don’t use the bible. I never said the bible was written to “confuse” anyone. The bible has pitfalls, which are confusing in a contradictory way, but I never said it was intentionally written as to confuse people.
--Are you sure you want to bring fossil evidence into this?—
Look, Reign, if you want to come at me with fossil evidence, you better be equipped with more than the opinion of a handful of people. You better show me where millions of scientists now believe the earth and its fossils are just a few thousand years old. Scientists who have repeated the experiment and come to the same conclusion. If you don’t do this, you might as well talk to the hand. Like I said, some people still believe that the world is flat, and they go to great lengths to prove their point, but, so far, they haven’t succeeded in swaying the majority of scientists that they are correct.
My beliefs are based in logic. I will give you an example: Let’s say you have a tube that you’re supposed to drop a marble into and it’s supposed to come out at the bottom of an apparatus and ring a bell. That’s the goal. This apparatus is Plexiglas and you can look inside and see a labyrinth of tubes going in all sorts of directions. The tube the marble drops into connects ambiguously to these other tubes, and these tubes connect ambiguously to other tubes and so on. There are 100 tubes coming out the bottom of this thing and you are supposed to pick the tube the marble will come out of and adjust the bell so it sits in front of the correct tube so the marble rings the bell as it exits.
You have 50 scientists who have run repeated experiments with this apparatus and they tell you the marble will come out of tube number 22. For argument sake, let's say none of these scientists believe in a god. They tell you they have repeated the experiment 112,327 times so far and each time the marble has come out of tube 22, without exception. These scientists show you their results that they’ve kept track of.
Now you have 50,000 Christians with one leader. Let’s call this leader Jim Jones, or Bob for all I care. Now Jim has carefully looked over this apparatus and carefully followed the tubing paths and concluded that the marble will exit from tube number 78. He convinces everybody by showing them why he has come to his conclusion. One-by-one, he takes his Christian friends over to the device, walks them through his reasoning, and they all become convinced that he is correct.
Your job is to decide who to believe. You have 50,000 people who are adamant that the marble will exit tube 78, even though they base their findings on blind faith. Then you have 50 scientists who have repeated the experiment 112,327 times and they showed you their results and tell you they’ve concluded the ball will exit tube 22. You want to talk about hypothesis? I don’t see a problem with accepting an educated guess compared to just a guess.
What are you going to do? Are you going to place the bell in front of tube 22, or tube 78?
You could try NOT to ignore our statements and go with the target you can attempt to discredit the easiest without offering a a better solution.
