Evolution or Creation?

[Sam_The_Man]

Thus retaining our position of having a free chocie in what we do.
Though as you said we are not aware of all the facts so, how do you know everything you just said is all there is too it?

What the crap? I never said it was. Saying "this is all there is too it" is the job of the religious.

It's also worth remembering that he did tell us about it and told us to choose, believe or chow down on forbidden fruits, we chose the fruit and now we have uncertainty and difficult choices to make, or atleast that's how i understood such things,

The Bible kind of skips over the most significant happening in the entirety of human history - our becoming sentient - so it's difficult to argue over what happened.

However, we, or rather Eve, were deceived by Satan, right? If we were deceived, that means we didn't really know what was going to happen. And if we didn't really know what was going to happen, that means God chose not to tell us.

the fact that he let us have Jesus to kill was quite a ncie gesture when you think about how we've already screwed up.

Why? What did Christ's death achieve, as opposed to, say, him continuing to preach, maybe proving his divinity and the existence of God beyond all doubt for all time? Nothing. All we got out of it was another religion.

Though the priests do say that Christ 'saved us all' in some way... in which case why did God wait until 4 BC to do it? Was he busy? What happened to everyone who died before Christ did, and wasn't lucky enough to be born into the Israelite tribe?

How manys econd chances would you give if you were a god and if you were going to give one would you simply trot on down there and explain what everyone had to do? Or would you test them via an entirely more subtle method?

I'd tell them exactly what they needed to do, I'd explain myself to everyone in crystal clear terms (rather than bearing my son of a virgin and having him trek around some utter sh*theap of a Roman outpost), and I wouldn't need to give a second chance.

Why? I imagine if there is a God there would be a whole knew realm of scenarios that we couldn't possibly presume to know of.

Uncertainty benefits no-one... except priests.

Ofcourse if you chose not to believe it then the concerns of being punished for all eternity wouldn't bother you,

But the people who do believe that I'm going to be punished for all eternity do bother me. Incessantly, and with varying degrees of force (some knock on the door with a copy of the Watchtower, some fly a plane into it).

atleast untill they presented themselves so it is still a choice,

A choice? Why would anyone choose Hell? Goths aside, no-one gets up one day and announces "I'm going to convert to Islam/become an agnostic/eat a pig because I want to go to Hell". That's not a choice, that's a find the lady game where Heaven is under one of 100,000 cards.

most of the christians i know tihnk punishment i for the evil not the non believers, it's the people that think that the non believers are evil that think as your example states.

The Bible quite clearly states that no-one comes to the Father except through Jesus Christ. I suppose it doesn't explicitly state that everyone else gets punished, but it's a safe assumption that being cast out of God's presence is a Bad Thing.

Anyone with more than three brain cells to rub together knows that the vision of Hell as a place of eternal fire and torment is a computer game scenario and nothing else anyway. Phyiscal pain is a symptom of physical existence. I think Hell is more likely to resemble the world of Salad Fingers.

 

[Sir_Brizz]

I think he means choice as in you choose to believe in God or not. And if by not believing in God you go to Hell, you pretty much inadvertently "chose" to go to Hell. Choice isn't always conscious, you know. Sometimes you don't go to work because you are sick, but you don't call in so you get fired...in which case you pretty inadvertently chose to get fired

 

[Sam_The_Man]

I think he means choice as in you choose to believe in God or not. And if by not believing in God you go to Hell, you pretty much inadvertently "chose" to go to Hell. Choice isn't always conscious, you know. Sometimes you don't go to work because you are sick, but you don't call in so you get fired...in which case you pretty inadvertently chose to get fired

Why would God want me to make a bad choice? It doesn't benefit me. It doesn't benefit him. Like I said, the problem is not choice, the problem is the information on which we make that choice. According to you, I'm supposed to make a choice based on what I learn from a load of people who are tedious at their best and loony at their worst.

 

[shadow_dragon]

What the crap? I never said it was. Saying "this is all there is too it" is the job of the religious.

Actually, it pretty much looked like that was what you were saying. Summing up the bible and it's teachings in such a way will get such reactions i believe.

However, we, or rather Eve, were deceived by Satan, right? If we were deceived, that means we didn't really know what was going to happen. And if we didn't really know what was going to happen, that means God chose not to tell us.

I believe the understanding is that she was tempted not decieved, she did not forget what she was told by god, she knew perfectly well it was the forbidden fruit, as did adam. I could be wrong but it was how i understood it.

Why? What did Christ's death achieve, as opposed to, say, him continuing to preach, maybe proving his divinity and the existence of God beyond all doubt for all time? Nothing. All we got out of it was another religion.

Though the priests do say that Christ 'saved us all' in some way... in which case why did God wait until 4 BC to do it? Was he busy? What happened to everyone who died before Christ did, and wasn't lucky enough to be born into the Israelite tribe?

He saved us, that big flood thing with Noah was god washing the world of it's sins the first time round, Christ saw it was about to happen again what with all the bad people and such about, so he sacrificed himself to save us, thus the sins of our fathers are not born onto us, though are own sins maybe. At least that is how i understood.

I'd tell them exactly what they needed to do, I'd explain myself to everyone in crystal clear terms (rather than bearing my son of a virgin and having him trek around some utter sh*theap of a Roman outpost), and I wouldn't need to give a second chance.

So you'd give people free choice and blackmail them into doing what you wanted? This would amke you as bad as the priests would it not?

Uncertainty benefits no-one... except priests.

......... and fortune tellers......... and casino's......... and any form of gambling outfit really............ and etc.

But the people who do believe that I'm going to be punished for all eternity do bother me. Incessantly, and with varying degrees of force (some knock on the door with a copy of the Watchtower, some fly a plane into it).

They are the people everyone dislike, as i said they are the ones who think "Not believing" in itself is evil.

A choice? Why would anyone choose Hell? Goths aside, no-one gets up one day and announces "I'm going to convert to Islam/become an agnostic/eat a pig because I want to go to Hell". That's not a choice, that's a find the lady game where Heaven is under one of 100,000 cards.

It amuses me slightly that you'd say this and yet you are aware of the consequences are you not? Haven't you just explained it a few times over?

The Bible quite clearly states that no-one comes to the Father except through Jesus Christ. I suppose it doesn't explicitly state that everyone else gets punished, but it's a safe assumption that being cast out of God's presence is a Bad Thing.

The bible quite clearly states a great many things that have been misinterpreted a hundred times over if you want to see evil conspiracies in it you can but it doesn't mean over people will.

 

[shadow_dragon]

Why would God want me to make a bad choice? It doesn't benefit me. It doesn't benefit him. Like I said, the problem is not choice, the problem is the information on which we make that choice. According to you, I'm supposed to make a choice based on what I learn from a load of people who are tedious at their best and loony at their worst.

God forbid that you make a decision based on your faith rather than someone elses word?

Einstien believed in god? Surely his word is good enough for you if you must be told what to do?

 

[Sam_The_Man]

God forbid that you make a decision based on your faith rather than someone elses word?

Faith? Just because I believe something doesn't make it true. Is all I have to do to go to Heaven just to believe that I will?

Einstien believed in god? Surely his word is good enough for you if you must be told what to do?

I'd've thought that was fairly obvious by now. No. No mere human's unsupported word is good enough when it comes to matters beyond this universe.

For the last time, I don't want my choice made for me. If there is a God, either he should stay out of humanity's affairs, or do it properly. If there is a 'choice' we have to make, and our choice determines our future, we should be given the information necessary to make the correct one. We are supposedly given the option of making a choice that is not only bad for us but bad for God. Why?

If it makes you feel better, I don't expect you to answer my question. No-one has come up with an answer in all the thousands of years that religions have existed, and no offence, but I don't think you can succeed where they failed.

 

[Sir_Brizz]

Why is it bad for God?? If you choose wrong then he doesn't have to deal with you.

 

[Metakill]

All your pink souls belong to the Yacatzima.

 

[Sam_The_Man]

Why is it bad for God?? If you choose wrong then he doesn't have to deal with you.

And what's good about that? More grist for Satan's mill? Why? If that's what he wants then why did he go to so much trouble - sending his son for us to kill - to prevent it?

 

[Sir_Brizz]

I duno. Why do parents let their kids do things on their own??

 

[Sam_The_Man]

I duno. Why do parents let their kids do things on their own??

If your kid jumps onto a torture rack and starts turning the wheels, you just sit there?

You must be reading a strange parenting manual.

Your analogy fails because learning from your mistakes requires you to be given a second chance after you realise the consequences of your actions in order to act on what you've learned. But when you do learn the consequences of your actions by going to Hell, according to religion that's it, you're f*cked.

The theory of reincarnation makes more sense, but then again, if you don't have any memory of your previous lives, how are you supposed to learn from them?

 

[shadow_dragon]

Faith? Just because I believe something doesn't make it true. Is all I have to do to go to Heaven just to believe that I will?

If you had faith you wouldn't need any evidence to prove it to you, so in theory yes, it makes it true, or true enough to serve it's purpose.

I'd've thought that was fairly obvious by now. No. No mere human's unsupported word is good enough when it comes to matters beyond this universe.

Ah! So it was rhetorical was it?

For the last time, I don't want my choice made for me. If there is a God, either he should stay out of humanity's affairs, or do it properly. If there is a 'choice' we have to make, and our choice determines our future, we should be given the information necessary to make the correct one. We are supposedly given the option of making a choice that is not only bad for us but bad for God. Why?

Why do you think it's your place to know and understand everything about the affairs of gods? Billions of others don't it.

If it makes you feel better, I don't expect you to answer my question. No-one has come up with an answer in all the thousands of years that religions have existed, and no offence, but I don't think you can succeed where they failed.

In fairness i'm not the best person to ask your questions too but i believe i can name people who could answer your questions, they are hardly the most ground breaking questions i've ever heard relating to such things.
Most of your questions are rhetorical in any case.

 

[Renegade Retard]

Creation.

Let the Christian bashing begin. (although Christianity is not a requirement for Creationism)

No, it isn't. But please don't let me impede on your martyrdom complex....

Iz da prophet!

 

[W0RF]

Exactly, but most trasnslations are BASED on the KJV even though they incorporate changes as necessary from other manuscripts. However, there is no way to verify any manuscripts earlier than Erasmus' manuscript of 1581 (?).

No. They. Are. Not.

Most modern translations draw primarily from Greek and other manuscripts that predate the KJV.

 

[Dus]

In other words, scientists have not found evolution occuring naturally, even on the scale of the fruit flies. They have only MADE it happen.

Natural evolution takes to long to be witnessed in one life time. However, different stages of the process of speciation have been found in the wild, among different species, ranging from insects right up to birds and snakes.

Dus - you and I agree on everything you posted, we just view it from a different perspective, or interpretation, if you will. You believe that it supports your theory, and I believe it supports mine.

Again, it goes back to what I said about having a pre-determined philosophy, then seeing the facts and interpreting those facts in light of what you believe.

This also supports my stance that it takes just as much faith to believe in evolution as it does creation.

I agree totally. Evolution needs as much faith as religion, because it is impossible to prove everything.

with the whole speciation thingy, shouldn't the total amount of species be increasing not decreasing...

In theory this is true, if extinction didn't exist. During the time that new species evolved, a lot got extinct as well, due to different causes. The most famous example is the extinction of all the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. But actually not just the dinosaurs got extinct, but abou 40% of all life on the earth (if I remember correctly). But extinction doesn't just occur with big catastrophies, but on a much smaller scale.
Also, if you imagine the evolution as a tree that gains more and more branches and sub-branches, and the dinosaurs didn't go extinct, then theorettically the dinosaurbranch would have produced thousands more species (subbranches). However, by going extinct, that branch was cut off at the base so to speak.
So the short version: extinction makes sure that speciation doesn't produce more and more and more species. It's not a complete balance, but it comes pretty close.

At least it did untill the last 200 years. In the last 200 years the rate of extinction has been at least 10 times as high as the 200.000 years before that. This is probably for the most part due to human beings destroying habitats and hunting species to extinction. Notice how I'm saying probably, because this has not been proven as yet.

Just for the record: I'm not trying to prove evolution without a reason of a doubt here. All I'm saying with these posts is that evidence is available for the theory. A lot of people here (and everywhere) dismiss the evolution theory based on misunderstandings about it. All I'm trying to do here is by giving some infromation getting people to think about it. If you still want to dismiss it in favor of a -in your eyes- better theroy, that's your right.
And I know where you christians and other creationists come from, like I said earlier I was raised a Christian as well.

 

[Panzer101]

I know Ive come in late, but, the big bang. If that was the begining of the universe, what was there before? How can things magically appear? If someone says: there was some stuff there before, then obviously the big bang was not the begining really.

 

[_Zd_Phoenix_]

The bible quite clearly states a great many things that have been misinterpreted a hundred times over if you want to see evil conspiracies in it you can but it doesn't mean over people will.

For a holy text it really does suck at being unequivocal.

 

[Sam_The_Man]

If you had faith you wouldn't need any evidence to prove it to you, so in theory yes, it makes it true, or true enough to serve it's purpose.

Why do you think it's your place to know and understand everything about the affairs of gods? Billions of others don't it.

So... if whatever I believe is right, and no-one knows and understands everything about the universe, I think we agree. Religion is useless.

In fairness i'm not the best person to ask your questions too but i believe i can name people who could answer your questions, they are hardly the most ground breaking questions i've ever heard relating to such things.
Most of your questions are rhetorical in any case.

No, they're not. A rhetorical question is one where the answer is already known. I'm asking questions to which there is no answer, but people seem to think there should be.

 

[Zarkazm]

I'm guessing the Evolutionist reasoning is that humans have evolved into super-killing and polluting creatures

It's sort of evident.

......... and fortune tellers......... and casino's......... and any form of gambling outfit really............ and etc.

Way to support Sam's argument. Religion as the Big Gamble™. Unless you really meant fraud, that is.

God forbid that you make a decision based on your faith rather than someone elses word?

And what would that faith be based on?

 

[Metakill]

I agree totally. Evolution needs as much faith as religion, because it is impossible to prove everything.

I don't see why people make this claim. It is thoroughly untrue. The belief in evolution (and scientific theories in general) is not based on faith whatsoever. It is based on what evidence is available. Currently, evolution is the model that best fits with the physical evidence of reality. If evidence is found that contradicts that model, or a better model is discovered, then the theory will be replaced based on the weight of that evidence.

OK, there is one aspect of faith here: that the world of external phenomena is consistently real. Thats it. However, even if you believe its all the illusion of Maya, you can discuss its behavior as if it were real. And it's a sure bet if you get hit in the back of the head with a truncheon, it will feel pretty real.