*sigh* *facepalm* (to dub's post)
I don't see anything bad about necroing this thread. Then again, I was one of those people who never opposed necroing.
I'm not neutral per se, I am a deist, and they kinda go against both parties, atheists and Christians. The more neutral person would be an agnostic, who says "I don't know if God exists or not, but I won't deny it if I see it". A deist says "A higher being exists, but his intentions are not clear and each human can worship him, or not, the way he pleases". I also don't believe in evolution, not related to deism but I don't.
I can't keep up with you guys... well, I'm a deist, I think Earth was made by an architect, all Bibles and Jesuses aside, and I'll leave this thread because I can't post at 2 pages an hour.
The problem (yes, I say problem) here is that everyone is trying to prove God exists by scientific means. For some people this works (I.E. Deists), but realistically, if you're talking about a "spiritual" one, than you cannot prove a spiritual being exists by scientific means.
That's your opinion. You cannot be like "deists think this" and then add "realistically...". You're basically just stating your opinion, disagreeing with the fact that God scientifically exists.
Quote from "Magistrate" »
Science only measures and calculates phenomena that are of this world/universe/etc.
Science measures and calculates what it can. The definitions such as "universe" are biased and unclear.
I mean, we used to think the world was flat!
Quote from "Magistrate" »
A God would supercede the limits and substance of his/her/its creations- it would have to or it wouldn't be God, it would be the product of its own power, which doesn't make sense (although it could still be possible since a God would not operate on our limited logic.)
How does that not make sense. Go watch "13th floor", a world inside a world inside a world, all created by, creating, humans. I think it's very well possible.
The Bible says that God made humans from his own image. This suggestes that God and humans are somewhat close, and while mostly I don't follow the Bible too closely, this may explain many things. Perhaps what some call "God" is simple a human (wow, scary thought, huh?) that generated the world through technology above ours. The specifics of this are not known.
No need to imagine that the author, if existant, is something that we cannot undestand at all.
Quote from "Magistrate" »
Therefore, this God-life/God-conscience would 1) not be made of matter, since that is a property of his creations
That doesn't work at all. He could very well be made of matter, just be outside of our little crystal ball.
From a pure philosophical standpoint, if we cannot trust the results produced by technology that has proved to work in conjecture with established theories of the world, such as the fundamental basics of radiation, how then can we know that the knowledge of past civilizations is true?
We can't unless there are secondary factors.
For instance, if you find a lot of SOLID stuff via archeology, it is normal to assume someone human built them, under the condition that they were not built in a fashion not suggestively available at that supposed area. Aka, Egypt and pyramids. Nobody is 100% sure where did they get that technology and how the heck did they build those and why, so that area is blurry.
Quote from "PhrozenDragon" »
What I'm saying is, if the natural laws and physical principles of our Universe were different in our past, then would this not also apply to our records of past human civilizations? How can we trust that Greece did exist back then?
Well, I think there was enough stuff for archaelogists to find regarding Greece, but I didn't really explore the subjects.
It's a different matter to prove something existed, and a whole other matter to prove WHEN it existed, and WHY, and HOW.
Quote from "PhrozenDragon" »
Well, we do have massive columns standing everywhere, texts and explanations for everything. But we also have fossil records and DNA from past and present creatures.
I do not defy the existance of fossils. I defy where did the creatures that resulted in those fossils came from, and at what time.
Quote from "PhrozenDragon" »
Saying that we don't know isn't proving anything. To disprove something, you will need to bring forth evidence which is clearly incompatible with the current theory.
That's the reverse approach, and I don't believe it. Just because there is a theory, and it's not disproven, doesn't mean that theory is correct. Deism also works. Everything that evolution describes can be explained, very nicely, by experimetns and exploration of a creator, and to me, it makes tons more sense than evolution. The most annoying thing for atheists is saying "fossils are there because God had a joke and made them". But they'd say that's impossible. God has no sense of humor. I say that's narrow-minded.
If I see something I can explain, I say "I don't know" until I find concrete proof. I found that proof for a creator, I did not find that proof for evolution.
Clearly you got no clue. Deism is not related to religion in any way. Thinking that a higher creature existed is not a religion. Religion is believing in Jesus, or into Bible, or whatever. In any case, there is 0 proof. Deism is just a conclusion that the existence of a creator makes sense due to the structure of the visible world. It may be harder to undrestand than agnosticism, but doesn't make it a religion.
Atheism is a religion. Unfounded belief that God does not, can't, and never existed.
That link leads nowhere. You keep pointing me to books, I read those before, they were very, very blurry.
Quote from "applesoffury" »
creation theory inaccurately dates the age of the earth and our solar system by an amazing billions of years.
I am not talking about the "official" creation theory. I am talking about deism. Belief that there was a being that created what we see. That's it. That's the whole theory. There was an architect, a god, a creator. The rest is speculation.
I don't think we can accurately date anything when it comes to "amazing billions of years". Carbon dating is imprecise, and how do we know under what conditions did the world exist at any point in time? I think guessing how old this planet is outside of the existence of mankind is assumptive and purely theoretical.
Quote from "gamma11" »
prove it? go look... it happens every day... one day dodos exist and the next day they cant compete with hunting by us and natural predators and die off... tehre are still other birds here... just not the dodo... it failed to adapt and died... plain and simple... there is a reason that the alligators and crocodiles are still here but not parasauralophus or pachysephyllasaurous
Exactly. Failed to adapt > Died. Not "evolved". Not turned into a big scary dodo that eats humans.
In fact, humans override anything else. They can destroy anything, and if they were not intelligent, they'd kill themselves by making every other species extinct and dying of hunger... lol
If evolution was true, tigers would adapt to radiation, and species wouldn't die out because of some little atmospheric disbalance. If you look at nature, it's hella fragile. Touch it, and it dies. Where did anyone see evolution? It only exists as steady improvement (like with the iguanas that adapted a bit better), but there are no extreme cases. If anything ever gets too extreme they just die. If anyone can adapt truly, it's humans.
What does that have to do with evolution? Mere adaptation.
I don't get it how people manage to compare adaptation (color change, fur change) with scales turning into feathers. We can make different species of dogs, but we can't turn a lizard in a bird.
"and now answer me this, if not evolution? then what created all the species of homo, and why did all but sapien disappear some 25000 years ago?" - creation theory can explain this just as (and better than) evolutionary theory does. I don't see why should everyone blindly believe particularly into evolution if creation can explain everything just as well?
And how do you know this? Do you actually know how many transitional fossils they have found. The first one was found just a couple years after Darwin wrote his book on the origin of species I believe. There has been much progress in the 100+ years since then, this isn't the 1800's anymore.
I read it, as a dominant factor in why The Theory of Evolution is not proven.
I read books in my time on this matter. Used to be fascinated. I realized that a lot of these books just want you to believe them but if you look at the facts they lack concrete proof in way too many areas. I read enough on evolution in my time and now I turn to philosophy, thank you very much. It's much more useful, it is something that is applicable now (believing in evolution or not would not make any difference to me, I'm just a deist and evolution doesn't disprove that), and it is something I can test on my own skin.
But, I do hate it when people tell me "evolution is proven". That is simply so not true. Show me a lab experiment of a lizard becoming a bird - I'll believe you. Until we can do that, I'll take this theory with a grain of salt.
Quote from "PhrozenDragon" »
But there are other aspects to keep in mind. A creature does not die simply because it has some features worse than it's competitors. Perhaps the lizard lacked natural predators for a long time where it lived, thus allowing it to develop in-between without dying. Perhaps a plague wiped out all the other lizards eating the same food, leaving a massive surplus to grow from.
We don't know, but not knowing does not disprove.
I was thinking of this. But I also thought of many many other possibilities. Nothing is entirely truthful. Why should I believe this theory, only because it's the only theory?
I am not trying to disprove the Theory of Evolution - I have nothing against it. I just do not choose to blindly believe in it, and it doesn't seem logical to me at this point, either I am stupid or there is just not enough proof for me to make it sound logical.
Quote from "PhrozenDragon" »
So Homo Erectus is not considered the fossil in between Homo Habilis and Homo Sapiens?
Yeah but he's not exactly a moderate term, he's a moderate species, not to mention that I am less concerned about the evolution between all these "Homo" as opposed to the evolution between whatever they evolved from. I am also not very confident about the fact that intelligence is something that can evolve the way it evolved into the human mind. For nature to generate a creature that would change the course of the world's progress seems very strange and un-harmonios to me. Almost as if humans are not really of this world.
well maybe u should read more into evolution then, it will explain how a lizard becomes a bird. it has to do with natural selection and survival.
No, it does not, at all. It does not explain how do moderate terms survive. Because they can't. Moreover, it doesn't explain how those moderate terms FUCKING REPRODUCE.
A lizard with feathers is not going to have an advantage over a lizard without. It simply doesn't make any sense. A lizard without feathers is not going to get to archeopteryx form.
I imagine a lizard with stronger scales surviving better than a lizard with weaker scales. That makes perfect sense. I also imagine color, length, size, basic chemistry of things evolving, improving.
I do not imagine a lizard gaining feathers. No matter how similar scales may seem to feathers for some people you cannot evolve from one into another in one day. You need a moderate term first. And, trust me, a lizard with feathery (aka weaker) scales would not survive. A lizard with lighter bone allowing it to jump would not survive either, lighter bones would hinder it. Moderate terms would not survive. Nor would mutants, which can at least explain where feathers come from. But even if a mutant is more advantageous, it won't reproduce without another identical mutant. Thus, the whole theory of evolution crashes down for me.
No one ever found a fossil of a moderate term of any evolutionary cycle. They saw the beginning, and the end, and that's it. Sounds a lot more like someone came, loaded up Spore, added a new creatures, and let it go whee run around to surprise the lizards.
There is one thing you guys should try. Pretend that nobody ever said "evolution". Pretend nobody told you anything about it. And try to explain how animals came to be. You'll understand that the only reason people want to believe in Evolution so much is because it is THE only current scientific theory on the matter here. But I can imagine many others, just as blurry. Just because one man once had an interesting theory doesn't mean people shouldn't have continued brainstorming... Just because evolution is an easy explanation for somethings doesn't mean it's the right one. There has been so many mistakes in science... srsly people.
Quote from "sapien52;305218 »
Gravitational theory is simple the understanding we have of gravity, it is what has been being worked on since at least Galileo Galilei and improved by Kepler, Newton and Einstein. And it the general theory of relativity stems more from light being constant, than it being the max. Also, the general theory of relativity is used to make things work, such as satellites and made predictions that classic mechanics failed to make, it's not just some belief to believe or disbelieve in, like all scientific theories it is a tool that is used quite extensively.
That is all fine. But this does not make me believe that this theory works everywhere outside of Earth, or outside of Earth perception. Satelites deal with Earth and its gravity. So does everything else we did. But no more.
Quote from "sapien52"" »
This is not how gravity works. In classical mechanics gravity is a force that exists between all matter. Which does not include light of course. In the general theory of relativity, it is the bending of the fabric of space-time, which is why it predicted that light would be affected as well, which was proven in 1916, just 1 year after the general theory of relativity was published.
I don't remember asking you to pretend to be smart and tell me about gravity theory. I can go and refresh my memory if I want with internet, but I don't need that.
I repeat. I believe what I can explain with my logic. I steer away from math and calculations because math can be illogical and creepy. I do not view our world as stagnant, and our mind as powerful as to understand what is really going on in its entirety. Therefore, I never believe something that's very far away unless I cannot find another explanation or assume the existence of such.
Wow, hopefully you're just not being very clear with your question. There's lots of reasons. Very obvious reasons. Even if you don't agree with those reasons, it would be amazing if you did not actually know any of them.
Um, what? Reasons that I should care about what people do? Or what? I don't really get you.
Quote from "sapien52" »
That's not the issue, it goes far beyond that. The Intelligent Design movement is not just disagreeing with how evolution is taught, they want to insert their own non-scientific ideas into a science class. They want to bridge the gap between church and state, as I have already stated.
Well, that's the movement, not the idea. Most religious groups try to make the gap less anyway. Try to get an atheist president chosen for office. They already made a whole uproar about Obama being Muslim. Oh my, that's so important for how a person runs a country... >_<
Quote from "sapien52" »
Also, nothing his 100% proven, that's not even relevant. The Theory of Evolution is just as well proven as the theory of gravity.
What the hell is the theory of gravity. If you are talking about the theory of relativity, well, I do not believe that either, because I know where it stems from: speed of light being the max...
When it comes to gravity, I believe, as far as Earth goes, it pulls things on Earth to itself. O believe that an apple will fall. That's all I believe when it comes to gravity - something that I can reason with. The theory that big masses attract smaller masses doesn't really do it for me on the universal level.
Evolution is a total out-of-the blue idea that came up some guy's mind at one point. It's a good idea but it's not complete and simply not enough to say "evolution has been". There are no middle fossils found, carbon fossil records become false after certain time periods, and on the main scale, if you read about, evolution is a pretty blurry department among scientists. That's not enough for me. No one can explain to me how can a lizard become a bird, no matter how many times they shove the fossil of the archeopteryx at me. If they can, I'll believe them.
Quote from "sapien52" »
Intelligent Design does not require that you believe in evolution... so not believing in evolution does not mean you cannot believe in Intelligent Design.
I thought intelligent design said that evolution was pre-programmed by God. Unless they changed their views or something, but that's what I was told in my biology class.
I said: it doesn't matter where something came from as long as it works, and as far as I am concerned, there is nothing wrong with the idea of intelligent design in its core form.
Quote from "applesoffury" »
These ideas are not necessarily "worse" than religion from a logical/rational stand point, but are often used as a real attack on science and used as a strategy to get religion into public schools, which is why these ideas have such a bad rap.
OK, why would anyone care about what humans try to do withe religion to get what they want, really?
As far as I know, there was an issue with people in biology class claiming evolution is 100% proven (which it totally is not), and the intelligent design folks opposed that. In any case, why would it matter.
I don't believe in evolution so I can't really believe in intelligent design, doesn't mean I don't believe in God, doesn't mean I do believe in Bible.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
I don't see anything bad about necroing this thread. Then again, I was one of those people who never opposed necroing.
I mean, we call people from other countries aliens.
Science measures and calculates what it can. The definitions such as "universe" are biased and unclear.
I mean, we used to think the world was flat!
How does that not make sense. Go watch "13th floor", a world inside a world inside a world, all created by, creating, humans. I think it's very well possible.
The Bible says that God made humans from his own image. This suggestes that God and humans are somewhat close, and while mostly I don't follow the Bible too closely, this may explain many things. Perhaps what some call "God" is simple a human (wow, scary thought, huh?) that generated the world through technology above ours. The specifics of this are not known.
No need to imagine that the author, if existant, is something that we cannot undestand at all.
That doesn't work at all. He could very well be made of matter, just be outside of our little crystal ball.
For instance, if you find a lot of SOLID stuff via archeology, it is normal to assume someone human built them, under the condition that they were not built in a fashion not suggestively available at that supposed area. Aka, Egypt and pyramids. Nobody is 100% sure where did they get that technology and how the heck did they build those and why, so that area is blurry.
Well, I think there was enough stuff for archaelogists to find regarding Greece, but I didn't really explore the subjects.
It's a different matter to prove something existed, and a whole other matter to prove WHEN it existed, and WHY, and HOW.
I do not defy the existance of fossils. I defy where did the creatures that resulted in those fossils came from, and at what time.
That's the reverse approach, and I don't believe it. Just because there is a theory, and it's not disproven, doesn't mean that theory is correct. Deism also works. Everything that evolution describes can be explained, very nicely, by experimetns and exploration of a creator, and to me, it makes tons more sense than evolution. The most annoying thing for atheists is saying "fossils are there because God had a joke and made them". But they'd say that's impossible. God has no sense of humor. I say that's narrow-minded.
If I see something I can explain, I say "I don't know" until I find concrete proof. I found that proof for a creator, I did not find that proof for evolution.
Atheism is a religion. Unfounded belief that God does not, can't, and never existed.
I am not talking about the "official" creation theory. I am talking about deism. Belief that there was a being that created what we see. That's it. That's the whole theory. There was an architect, a god, a creator. The rest is speculation.
I don't think we can accurately date anything when it comes to "amazing billions of years". Carbon dating is imprecise, and how do we know under what conditions did the world exist at any point in time? I think guessing how old this planet is outside of the existence of mankind is assumptive and purely theoretical. Exactly. Failed to adapt > Died. Not "evolved". Not turned into a big scary dodo that eats humans.
In fact, humans override anything else. They can destroy anything, and if they were not intelligent, they'd kill themselves by making every other species extinct and dying of hunger... lol
If evolution was true, tigers would adapt to radiation, and species wouldn't die out because of some little atmospheric disbalance. If you look at nature, it's hella fragile. Touch it, and it dies. Where did anyone see evolution? It only exists as steady improvement (like with the iguanas that adapted a bit better), but there are no extreme cases. If anything ever gets too extreme they just die. If anyone can adapt truly, it's humans.
I don't get it how people manage to compare adaptation (color change, fur change) with scales turning into feathers. We can make different species of dogs, but we can't turn a lizard in a bird.
"and now answer me this, if not evolution? then what created all the species of homo, and why did all but sapien disappear some 25000 years ago?" - creation theory can explain this just as (and better than) evolutionary theory does. I don't see why should everyone blindly believe particularly into evolution if creation can explain everything just as well?
I read books in my time on this matter. Used to be fascinated. I realized that a lot of these books just want you to believe them but if you look at the facts they lack concrete proof in way too many areas. I read enough on evolution in my time and now I turn to philosophy, thank you very much. It's much more useful, it is something that is applicable now (believing in evolution or not would not make any difference to me, I'm just a deist and evolution doesn't disprove that), and it is something I can test on my own skin.
But, I do hate it when people tell me "evolution is proven". That is simply so not true. Show me a lab experiment of a lizard becoming a bird - I'll believe you. Until we can do that, I'll take this theory with a grain of salt.
I was thinking of this. But I also thought of many many other possibilities. Nothing is entirely truthful. Why should I believe this theory, only because it's the only theory?
I am not trying to disprove the Theory of Evolution - I have nothing against it. I just do not choose to blindly believe in it, and it doesn't seem logical to me at this point, either I am stupid or there is just not enough proof for me to make it sound logical.
Yeah but he's not exactly a moderate term, he's a moderate species, not to mention that I am less concerned about the evolution between all these "Homo" as opposed to the evolution between whatever they evolved from. I am also not very confident about the fact that intelligence is something that can evolve the way it evolved into the human mind. For nature to generate a creature that would change the course of the world's progress seems very strange and un-harmonios to me. Almost as if humans are not really of this world.
A lizard with feathers is not going to have an advantage over a lizard without. It simply doesn't make any sense. A lizard without feathers is not going to get to archeopteryx form.
I imagine a lizard with stronger scales surviving better than a lizard with weaker scales. That makes perfect sense. I also imagine color, length, size, basic chemistry of things evolving, improving.
I do not imagine a lizard gaining feathers. No matter how similar scales may seem to feathers for some people you cannot evolve from one into another in one day. You need a moderate term first. And, trust me, a lizard with feathery (aka weaker) scales would not survive. A lizard with lighter bone allowing it to jump would not survive either, lighter bones would hinder it. Moderate terms would not survive. Nor would mutants, which can at least explain where feathers come from. But even if a mutant is more advantageous, it won't reproduce without another identical mutant. Thus, the whole theory of evolution crashes down for me.
No one ever found a fossil of a moderate term of any evolutionary cycle. They saw the beginning, and the end, and that's it. Sounds a lot more like someone came, loaded up Spore, added a new creatures, and let it go whee run around to surprise the lizards.
There is one thing you guys should try. Pretend that nobody ever said "evolution". Pretend nobody told you anything about it. And try to explain how animals came to be. You'll understand that the only reason people want to believe in Evolution so much is because it is THE only current scientific theory on the matter here. But I can imagine many others, just as blurry. Just because one man once had an interesting theory doesn't mean people shouldn't have continued brainstorming... Just because evolution is an easy explanation for somethings doesn't mean it's the right one. There has been so many mistakes in science... srsly people.
That is all fine. But this does not make me believe that this theory works everywhere outside of Earth, or outside of Earth perception. Satelites deal with Earth and its gravity. So does everything else we did. But no more. I don't remember asking you to pretend to be smart and tell me about gravity theory. I can go and refresh my memory if I want with internet, but I don't need that.
I repeat. I believe what I can explain with my logic. I steer away from math and calculations because math can be illogical and creepy. I do not view our world as stagnant, and our mind as powerful as to understand what is really going on in its entirety. Therefore, I never believe something that's very far away unless I cannot find another explanation or assume the existence of such.
Well, that's the movement, not the idea. Most religious groups try to make the gap less anyway. Try to get an atheist president chosen for office. They already made a whole uproar about Obama being Muslim. Oh my, that's so important for how a person runs a country... >_<
What the hell is the theory of gravity. If you are talking about the theory of relativity, well, I do not believe that either, because I know where it stems from: speed of light being the max...
When it comes to gravity, I believe, as far as Earth goes, it pulls things on Earth to itself. O believe that an apple will fall. That's all I believe when it comes to gravity - something that I can reason with. The theory that big masses attract smaller masses doesn't really do it for me on the universal level.
Evolution is a total out-of-the blue idea that came up some guy's mind at one point. It's a good idea but it's not complete and simply not enough to say "evolution has been". There are no middle fossils found, carbon fossil records become false after certain time periods, and on the main scale, if you read about, evolution is a pretty blurry department among scientists. That's not enough for me. No one can explain to me how can a lizard become a bird, no matter how many times they shove the fossil of the archeopteryx at me. If they can, I'll believe them.
I thought intelligent design said that evolution was pre-programmed by God. Unless they changed their views or something, but that's what I was told in my biology class.
I said: it doesn't matter where something came from as long as it works, and as far as I am concerned, there is nothing wrong with the idea of intelligent design in its core form. OK, why would anyone care about what humans try to do withe religion to get what they want, really?
As far as I know, there was an issue with people in biology class claiming evolution is 100% proven (which it totally is not), and the intelligent design folks opposed that. In any case, why would it matter.
I don't believe in evolution so I can't really believe in intelligent design, doesn't mean I don't believe in God, doesn't mean I do believe in Bible.