Religious/Evolutionary Debate Thread

[Stilgar]

So what was your "belief system" that was monkey wrenched?

 

[Frostblood]

It did mine. Evolution wasn't exactly a sticking point, but I did ignore it for a few years. Humanist fiction and philosophy did most of the "damage" in advance.

Would you say that the first step in your disconversion wasn't intellectual at all? I've just written an essay on persuasion and attitude change and my understanding is that when people change their opinions on, well, anything but especially religion, it's because they wern't happy with them in the first place. In the case of cults, this usually means that they wern't happy in that social group. Then after they fall out of love with the cult and the leader, they start asing questions and doubting the doctrines. Would you agree?

 

[bobtheking]

This is so ironic. You can point to evidence to support your theory until you're blue in the face, but it's still just a theory and not eveyone has to believe it unconditionally. You're your own worst enemy here. I agree that creationism, taught as fact, probably doesn't have a place in public schools alongside endeavours of a purely rational nature. But that's not exactly the issue here, is it?

So quit whining, you sissy pants bitch.

: p

i'm not saying anyone has to believe evolution. i'm trying to get people that might be disbelieving it for the wrong reasons to reconsider. i'm sure there valid are reasons to not believe in evolution, but none of them have been pointed out in this thread.

i'm not against creationism in schools, just not in biology class. if its a religion class (my school has a religions of the world class) then sure, thats where it belongs. as long as other religions' ideas are taught as well.

edit: yes, as Q said, my hick rant was paraphrasing red fist's post. if you read it, you'll see i really didn't exaggerate much:

"""""Creationists are thus forced into illogical, unjustified attacks of fossil dating methods, or irrelevant and usually flat-out wrong proclamations about a supposed "lack" of "transitional forms"."""""""""

Ya Ya ya I need more than fossils,

For starters if it took so long for it to become human there would be a even timeline of skelatins found by now.
Oh thats right all your evidence got ruined i forgot.

Oh wait at least we have a book a bible for at least 6000 years wich has stayed around.

All I can think is anyone who sets out to disprove God and only one God through ANY means is a self absorbed human,and your hell is going to be an eternity of trying to disprove God.
And don't get picky with me either,YES if you try to understand evolution you are slapping the creator around,no faith,no soul,no shame allways ME ME ME.

I bet those who follow this eveolution stuff nowdays are all for abortion,fag marrage,and anti religious symbols shouldnt be in goverment run places. hahah I know I'm right too.

Oh wait I said somthing that will offend all these college liberal brainwashed punks of the age,I still see nothing here proving there isn't a God either,ya ya it's all in my head,

But if you believe in eveolution or entertain thoughts about it,your a flamming idiot,
face the facts.

Bible=real
complete evidence on eveolution=not real.

also, i didn't mean that there are reasons to believe evolution is false, just not necessarily true yet. there are holes, but the are being filled, and have been in the process of being filled for along time. very little evidence to the contrary has been found, and the transitional forms page i linked does include things that would prove the transitional forms examples given wrong.

 

[QUALTHWAR]

This is so ironic. You can point to evidence to support your theory until you're blue in the face, but it's still just a theory and not eveyone has to believe it unconditionally. You're your own worst enemy here. I agree that creationism, taught as fact, probably doesn't have a place in public schools alongside endeavours of a purely rational nature. But that's not exactly the issue here, is it?

So quit whining, you sissy pants bitch.

: p

I think Bob was just responding to a thread by redfist. The guy was going on about people being fags and something about abortion and he knows all this is true, etc. because we don’t side with religion.

 

[bobtheking]

also, i don't think the evolution thing in biology class is as big a deal as the religious side makes it out to be. in my bio class we spent MAYBE 10 minutes on evolution as an explanation for our origins, all the rest was spent on stuff that is fact like genes, mutation, natural selection, etc.

 

[QUALTHWAR]

Would you say that the first step in your disconversion wasn't intellectual at all? I've just written an essay on persuasion and attitude change and my understanding is that when people change their opinions on, well, anything but especially religion, it's because they wern't happy with them in the first place. In the case of cults, this usually means that they wern't happy in that social group. Then after they fall out of love with the cult and the leader, they start asing questions and doubting the doctrines. Would you agree?

In my case, I just started wondering about things. People wouldn’t answer my questions directly, and that got me to wondering. I’d ask stuff like where did god from, and I’d get answers like god’s always been here, or we’re not supposed to ask such questions. I figured god wouldn’t mind me wondering about him/her/it, and the part about god always being here bothered me. Plus, I knew that I only believed in god because of what my parents told me, and the preachers, and the bible, and it was all hearsay. I figured if god was real, he could stand up to some questioning. I started learning about science and the Big Bang came up. When I heard that everything in our universe started from a pinpoint of energy, things started changing for me.

I realized that I was left with 2 major ideas, and neither one made any sense. God has to be something, so where did that ‘something’ come from. It was a “which came first, the chicken or the egg” thing, with the realization that if god is something, the something that makes god had to come first. That is when I really started to doubt religion and took a closer look at things.

The date of our creation had all sorts of flaws; stories in the bible had flaws. The one show that really put the last nail in the coffin for religion was a show about the Dead Sea Scrolls. They talked about these deeply religious scholars who were working on deciphering the scrolls, and had devoted their lives to god and were very knowledgeable when it came to religious matters. After years of deciphering, they found out that Jesus was nothing special. In fact, they found out he was sort of a rebel.

These scholars discovered that when the bible made reference to “The Holy One” they were actually talking about John the Baptist, not jesus. They found out why the bible sometimes makes reference to a city with a plural ending. Something like Jerusalem and Jerusalems with an ‘S’ on the end. Don’t know if that’s the right city, but you get the point. Anyway, they found out that some people were getting fed up with all the stuff going on in their city and decided to leave and start their own city. This second city is why there is an ‘S’ on the end in the bible stories.

The people who started the new city had positions (or names) given to them; like when people are designated Knights and Dukes and such. Some of these people were designated Angels, and I believe god or gods. So in these stories about the city when the bible mentions angels, they are just talking about a real person with the designation angel.

They discovered that jesus wasn’t really all that great like they had always thought, and I believe they said he married and had children. This show was so damning to religion because it was these religious scholars who had found all this out. They talked about how deeply upset some of these scholars became, because it totally changed everything for them. They said some of these scholars were so upset by all this that they couldn’t go on with the Dead Sea Scrolls project and had to leave. If someone who wasn’t all that interested in religion had discovered this, people wouldn’t notice it as much, but for religious scholars, who had devoted their lives to god, to discover their beliefs had been wrong all these years, it was shocking because these people in no way wanted to discover all this. But there it was right in front of them.

I remember thinking at the time when watching the show that this is extremely damning to religion. It was so damning that it could undermine religion and change the world. I wondered if religious groups would try to get the show removed from the air. Well, I don’t know what happened, but I never saw that show again. It was creepy. They would rerun shows all the time about religion, but not this show. It was almost as if the government had stepped in and said not to air the show again because it could completely change our world. It was weird. See, this show wasn’t like a Roswell alien crash where they could say it was a weather balloon; it was a show about deeply religious people who didn’t want to change their minds, but they had to. It was profound!

Later on, I learned how there had been stories very similar to the Noah flood story, long before the Noah story. Then I realized it would have been impossible for Noah to collect two of everything. God would have had to help with collecting two of everything, and keep these two creatures alive, and make sure they didn’t have any problems, then intervene with a gene pool of two creatures so birth defects wouldn’t be rampant. If a god is going to do all this, it might as well leave Noah out of it. There were just too many hurdles to get over, and it seemed like the Legend of Gilgamesh just being retold.

Then problems just started compounding with religious theories and many of those problems we talked about here. But it was a long, slow process for me to change my mind completely. I kept an open mind for a long time, but one thing after another just sunk the religious ship.

 

[Stilgar]

I think Bob was just responding to a thread by redfist. The guy was going on about people being fags and something about abortion and he knows all this is true, etc. because we don’t side with religion.

Remember the old maxim.

Don't feed the trolls.

 

[Cat Fuzz]

This is so ironic. You can point to evidence to support your theory until you're blue in the face, but it's still just a theory and not eveyone has to believe it unconditionally. You're your own worst enemy here. I agree that creationism, taught as fact, probably doesn't have a place in public schools alongside endeavours of a purely rational nature. But that's not exactly the issue here, is it?

So quit whining, you sissy pants bitch.

: p

Quoted for truth.

 

[Evil_Cope]

But Stilgar, Aren't you hungry?

 

[Stilgar]

/me gives cope a bone


UP THE ARSE!

hurhurhur

 

[GoAt]

i see that many people here are thinking in terms of thousands of years when they try to immagine evolution..


you need to think in billions of years

 

[QUALTHWAR]

Maybe they should just start thinking.

 

[Cat Fuzz]

you need to think in billions of years

Why? The Universe hasn't been around for billions of years.

 

[Mister_Prophet]

Why? The Universe hasn't been around for billions of years.

*sigh* Yes...yes it is. I'm not even basing this on some "crazy" evolutionist's theory. This is what they teach you in highschool science class. Ever take Earth Science? What about a course on astrology?

 

[oosyxxx]

Quoted for truth.

Quoted for fun.

 

[QUALTHWAR]

Why? The Universe hasn't been around for billions of years.

Okay, it’s clear that you think the earth isn’t that old.

Most scientists believe that the earth is about 4.6 billion years old.

Radioactive decay is the way scientists have determined the age of the earth.

You’ve always seemed to be a levelheaded fellow to me, so I have to believe you wouldn't just say all these people are wrong with their radioactive decay analysis without proving to yourself that they made a mistake.

Could you show us specifically where they made a mistake in their calculations?

 

[bobtheking]

don't bother, its pointless. he won't respond, then 10 pages later suddenly repeat the same statement. like bush did at the debates. that is why this thread is so long. there is a similar pattern in most of the arguments presented in this thread, this particular one has been waiting on a response at least 3 or 4 times now.

which is why i'm done with the thread. screw you guys, i'm going home!

 

[Cat Fuzz]

Okay, it’s clear that you think the earth isn’t that old.

Most scientists believe that the earth is about 4.6 billion years old.

Radioactive decay is the way scientists have determined the age of the earth.

You’ve always seemed to be a levelheaded fellow to me, so I have to believe you wouldn't just say all these people are wrong with their radioactive decay analysis without proving to yourself that they made a mistake.

Could you show us specifically where they made a mistake in their calculations?

Well, I'm not up on my radioactive decay math, so I wouldn't be able to do that. But, in order to determine the age of the Universe using astronomy, radioactive decay and such things, and assumption has to be made that the speed of light has always been constant forever and ever and also that radioactive decay has been constant forever and ever. When God created the Universe, it was ready to go right out of the box. Thats why we can see starlight from stars that are millions of light years away and only have a thousands of years old universe. So, there, bob.

 

[bobtheking]

well, since you addressed me directly

Well, I'm not up on my radioactive decay math, so I wouldn't be able to do that. But, in order to determine the age of the Universe using astronomy, radioactive decay and such things, and assumption has to be made that the speed of light has always been constant forever and ever and also that radioactive decay has been constant forever and ever. When God created the Universe, it was ready to go right out of the box. Thats why we can see starlight from stars that are millions of light years away and only have a thousands of years old universe. So, there, bob.

radioactive decay does not depend on the speed of light. the fact that these two measurements of earth's age agree pretty strongly implies that the speed of light and radiocative decay is/was constant. the only possibility remaining since these two agree with eachother is that time in the universe itself was moving slower (which has already been covered, and is probably wrong). however this is irrelivant. it still means billions of years have passed on earth in our frame of reference, even if it doesn't appear that way to an outside observer. note that i am making no claims about the origins of the universe, only what it would look like if it was 'ready to go right out of the box'.

 

[QUALTHWAR]

Well, I'm not up on my radioactive decay math, so I wouldn't be able to do that. But, in order to determine the age of the Universe using astronomy, radioactive decay and such things, and assumption has to be made that the speed of light has always been constant forever and ever and also that radioactive decay has been constant forever and ever. When God created the Universe, it was ready to go right out of the box. Thats why we can see starlight from stars that are millions of light years away and only have a thousands of years old universe. So, there, bob.

Radioactive decay is pretty darned constant. It’s sort of the like the vibrational frequency of a quartz crystal that makes clocks and watches stay in time (as long as there’s nothing else wrong with them).

So, you say that the radioactive decay of elements was different years ago, although no scientists have found any pattern of this within the elements? And you say that this is so even though you’ve never done any research into the matter. In effect, you are just “assuming” that radioactive decay was not always the same.

Let me try to sum this all up for myself:

You’re assuming radioactive decay is not a constant. (as close to being constant as necessary to give reasonable results).

You offer no calculations (because you’re not up on your math) to show that scientists worldwide have all this wrong. (that’s too bad because that would most likely win you a Nobel prize in physics)

You say we have to assume radioactive decay wasn’t always the same, as opposed to assuming that radioactive decay was always the same, even though scientists have found no evidence to suggest the decay used to be different on earth and in the solar system from rocks that have fallen to earth, rocks gathered from the moon, even after many years of research.


May I make a suggestion? You might not want you or your family to ever have any x-rays or cat scans done, because it sounds like science is pretty screwed up. You probably don’t want you or your family to take any medicine, because it sounds like science is pretty screwed up. You probably don’t want you or your family in a vehicle, using plastic of any form, or using anything associated with electricity, because it sounds like science is pretty screwed up.