Civil Discussion About Religion

[jsarno]

Originally Posted by Schneed10

No you're misunderstanding me. I understood his point, he said just because you can't see the wind doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Likewise, you can't see God, but that doesn't mean he doesn't exist. I got the point. Now here's mine: I only believe that things exist if there is scientific evidence that it exists. I don't have to see the evidence with my eyes, but there has to be evidence. Wind: you don't see it, but you feel it on your skin, and you can measure its velocity. Chemical scanners can analyze it and tell you that it's made up of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and other gases. Other stars in space: detected by Hubble.

I don't believe God exists because there's no evidence of it. People who believe in him go on faith. In the bolded part above, you're simply asking the fundamental question. Do you or don't you believe God exists? I don't. I need evidence. There is NONE. There is only faith. That's not enough for me. If it is for you, that's fine. But please, don't try to tell me that because I can't see the wind, and because I can't see God, therefore he exists. That's the most retarded logic in the world.

FYI- thanks for toning down the posts...I feel you offer a good counterpoint to the arguments, so I would not like to see your posts ignored.
I agree that just because you can't see the wind, that is an arguement for the existance of God. I am glad to see you got the point as well.
I do firmly beleive that to prove the existance of God, you need look no farther than the mirror. A human being can not scientifically be proven. There are so many loop holes in how we started to where we are now from a scientific standpoint. How do we all of a sudden "adapt" to our surroundings, then grow stuff to accomodate? The human body is so complex that is could not have been by accident. I realize this is opinion, but so is evolution. (keep in mind I fully beleive in evolution). Evolution is not fact, it is theory...or opinion. After I am done looking at myself in the mirror to my beliefs that God exists, I look around the world at how everything fits just right. How can there be no other planet in all our explored galaxies that can sustain our life? How is it from the billions and billions or stars / planets, this is the ONLY one we can live on? The only one that has such a delecate system that we can actually wipe ourselves off the planet? It's just right, not too hot, not too cold, plenty of oxygen, plenty of sun light...perfect rotation, perfect revolution etc. It's just too much of a coincidence not to be from a higher design. The odds of all this being like this by coincidence is so astronomical I don't have enough space to place the odds. How can science honestly overcome those odds?

[jsarno]

It's off to work guys...I'll see you tomorrow.

[Schneed10]

Originally Posted by jsarno

It's off to work guys...I'll see you tomorrow.

Just wondering, where is it that your work begins at 2:00 pm New Mexico time? That's an interesting finance job. Sales maybe?

[jsarno]

Originally Posted by Schneed10

Just wondering, where is it that your work begins at 2:00 pm New Mexico time? That's an interesting finance job. Sales maybe?

Actually it started at 3:30pm...I closed last night. Check out my profile...I am a restaurant manager for Chilis. Closes go from 3:30pm to 1:00am ish, 2:00am on friday and saturday night. Opens go from 7:30am to 5:30pm ish. This is why you'll notice I have some very early posts (2am) and sporatic appearances on here cause I work all the damn time. I'm wanting to get out of the business and back to banking.

[Schneed10]

Originally Posted by jsarno

FYI- thanks for toning down the posts...I feel you offer a good counterpoint to the arguments, so I would not like to see your posts ignored.
I agree that just because you can't see the wind, that is an arguement for the existance of God. I am glad to see you got the point as well.
I do firmly beleive that to prove the existance of God, you need look no farther than the mirror. A human being can not scientifically be proven. There are so many loop holes in how we started to where we are now from a scientific standpoint. How do we all of a sudden "adapt" to our surroundings, then grow stuff to accomodate? The human body is so complex that is could not have been by accident. I realize this is opinion, but so is evolution. (keep in mind I fully beleive in evolution). Evolution is not fact, it is theory...or opinion. After I am done looking at myself in the mirror to my beliefs that God exists, I look around the world at how everything fits just right. How can there be no other planet in all our explored galaxies that can sustain our life? How is it from the billions and billions or stars / planets, this is the ONLY one we can live on? The only one that has such a delecate system that we can actually wipe ourselves off the planet? It's just right, not too hot, not too cold, plenty of oxygen, plenty of sun light...perfect rotation, perfect revolution etc. It's just too much of a coincidence not to be from a higher design. The odds of all this being like this by coincidence is so astronomical I don't have enough space to place the odds. How can science honestly overcome those odds?

We haven't checked out all the planets in the universe. Because first off, many scientists believe, and this is a recent story, that life does/did exist on Mars (just not the kind of life we're used to: this life is Hydrogen Peroxide based as opposed to Water based).

If we could examine all the planets in the universe, there very well may be plenty that we can live on.

Secondly, I bolded a section of your post above because it is most alarming. It appears that you don't understand evolution at all. Evolution is not a person's ability to adapt to it's environment. And we definitely didn't do it all of a sudden. Take a skunk's ancestor. The way it works is 99.999% of those animals are born completely normal, similar to the rest of the population. Then there will be one skunk born with the ability to spray smelly crap all over a predator, freaking him out, and scaring him away. That skunk has sex with other skunks. The genetic trait gets passed down. That keeps happening until the predators eventually stop attacking the stinky skunks, and they kill off all the normal ones. This takes generations and generations.

It's not that we can adapt that quickly. It's that every now and then, we make a baby that can survive something the others can. And he passes that trait on until it dominates the population.

Maybe you knew that, maybe you didn't. But I felt the need to clarify the theory.

The other bolded part I noted was your section saying to prove the existence of God, look in the mirror. That's not proof. That's your belief.

Let's get our definitions right:

Prove - to establish the truth or genuineness of

Believe - to have confidence in the truth, the existence, or the reliability of something, although without absolute proof that one is right in doing so

[steveo395]

Schneed, how could you believe in evolution if you have never seen it happen. It has never been observed anywhere, not in a lab or in nature. Isn't that the same reason why you don't believe in God? I know some species have slightly changed to their environment, but they have never been changed into a new species. How could you then believe it if it has never been seen?

[saden1]

Originally Posted by steveo395

Schneed, how could you believe in evolution if you have never seen it happen. It has never been observed anywhere, not in a lab or in nature. Isn't that the same reason why you don't believe in God? I know some species have slightly changed to their environment, but they have never been changed into a new species. How could you then believe it if it has never been seen?

Humans have been getting taller over the centuries, does that mean we are evolving? What about monkeys who have developed language skills? Does that mean we are not unique in our cognitive abilities? You have a tail bone yet you don't have a tale?

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it's probably a duck.

[cpayne5]

Originally Posted by saden1

Humans have been getting taller over the centuries, does that mean we are evolving. What about monkeys who have developed language skills? Does that mean we are not unique in our cognitive abilities. You have a tail bone yet you don't have a tale?

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it's probably a duck.

Who cares about ducks. I wanna see a "monkey-fish-frog". YouTube - Mrs. Garrison teaching the evolution

[Schneed10]

Originally Posted by steveo395

Schneed, how could you believe in evolution if you have never seen it happen. It has never been observed anywhere, not in a lab or in nature. Isn't that the same reason why you don't believe in God? I know some species have slightly changed to their environment, but they have never been changed into a new species. How could you then believe it if it has never been seen?

Because there are fossil records that show a gradual development of ancestral apes to homo sapien man. Again, getting back to that incredibly dumbfounding analogy, you don't need to see the wind to know it's there.

I don't need to see cro magnun man to realize that he looks an awful lot like a cross between a man and a gorilla. The scientists have studied the fossils, and the overwhelming majority of them agree that humans in their present form came from apes. I mean how else can you explain why chimpanzees are so similar to humans?

Getting to Saden's point about me chilling the F out, lucky for him I'm pretty much coming to the end of the conversation, because pretty much everything that can be said has been said. I can totally dig someone's viewpoint on faith; if you have it, that's fine and it's very noble. Jsarno is a good guy to debate with and I appreciate his views, because while he's religious and I respect him for it, he also acknowledges the overwhelming probability that evolution is on the money. I can agree to disagree with any religious viewpoint. But when someone refuses to believe evolution is probably right? I'm sorry. I find that ignorant. It's like ignoring the work of gaggles of scientists. It's intellectually lazy, and frankly just plain stupid.

Evolution is not a belief. It is a theory. Theories have evidence to support them, even though they cannot be proven. There is such thing as being 99% sure a theory is correct. Not everything is 100% sure, and not everything is 0% sure. It's impossible to get to 100% sure on evolution, we don't have time machines. But scientists are 99% sure evolution is on the money; despite the fact that many of those scientists are religious. There's no reason that religious belief and the theory of evolution can't coexist. One is a theory, the other is a belief. They'll only conflict if you're one of those morons who believes every single thing in the Bible (book of Genesis) is true. Thankfully, there aren't many of those people left in the world. Progress is good.

I'm done on this topic. I part by saying religion is great. I don't believe in it, but if you do, good for you. Evolution however, is not a belief. It is a theory. And if you refuse to consider the overwhelming evidence in favor of it, then you truly are ignorant.

[steveo395]

Originally Posted by Schneed10

Because there are fossil records that show a gradual development of ancestral apes to homo sapien man. Again, getting back to that incredibly dumbfounding analogy, you don't need to see the wind to know it's there.

What about how there are tons of holes in the fossil record? And how come you can use that analogy for evolution, but someone else can't use it for religion?

I don't need to see cro magnun man to realize that he looks an awful lot like a cross between a man and a gorilla. The scientists have studied the fossils, and the overwhelming majority of them agree that humans in their present form came from apes. I mean how else can you explain why chimpanzees are so similar to humans?

Because they came from the same designer.

Getting to Saden's point about me chilling the F out, lucky for him I'm pretty much coming to the end of the conversation, because pretty much everything that can be said has been said. I can totally dig someone's viewpoint on faith; if you have it, that's fine and it's very noble. Jsarno is a good guy to debate with and I appreciate his views, because while he's religious and I respect him for it, he also acknowledges the overwhelming probability that evolution is on the money. I can agree to disagree with any religious viewpoint. But when someone refuses to believe evolution is probably right? I'm sorry. I find that ignorant. It's like ignoring the work of gaggles of scientists. It's intellectually lazy, and frankly just plain stupid.

Do you realize how small the odds are against the first cell being formed by amino acids randomly coming together? Just for one protein to form in an ideal atmosphere given 100 billion years is estimated to be 1 in 10^67.
Origin of life, does evolution supply the answers?
And I don't feel like hearing your crap that this is a christian website. It is made up of scientific facts.

Evolution is not a belief. It is a theory. Theories have evidence to support them, even though they cannot be proven. There is such thing as being 99% sure a theory is correct. Not everything is 100% sure, and not everything is 0% sure. It's impossible to get to 100% sure on evolution, we don't have time machines. But scientists are 99% sure evolution is on the money; despite the fact that many of those scientists are religious. There's no reason that religious belief and the theory of evolution can't coexist. One is a theory, the other is a belief. They'll only conflict if you're one of those morons who believes every single thing in the Bible (book of Genesis) is true. Thankfully, there aren't many of those people left in the world. Progress is good.

I'm done on this topic. I part by saying religion is great. I don't believe in it, but if you do, good for you. Evolution however, is not a belief. It is a theory. And if you refuse to consider the overwhelming evidence in favor of it, then you truly are ignorant.

Basically all of evolution has been unproven, so you're basically just making things up. You are being ignorant for not looking at all of the facts.

[saden1]

Originally Posted by steveo395

And I don't feel like hearing your crap that this is a christian website. It is made up of scientific facts.

It's not science, it's people's opinions. Mostly, they ask philosophical questions that support belief in god. I'm pretty sure some of the quotes they are using were taken out of context and used for the sole purpose of supporting creationism.

[GTripp0012]

Originally Posted by jsarno

It's just too much of a coincidence not to be from a higher design. The odds of all this being like this by coincidence is so astronomical I don't have enough space to place the odds. How can science honestly overcome those odds?

Ultimately, my continuing belief in the Lord comes down to this. The theroy of evolution as it pertains to creating life says that life was begun through occurences of astronomically small probabilities. Ridiculously astronomically small. Would never, ever be duplicated again. But merely because it's possible, it's become a haven for "nonbelievers" who think that the Bible was a work of fiction.

The scientific method DEMANDS that an experiment be recreatable for it to be truly scientific. Evolution will likely never be recreated because of the nature of the theroy (A bunch of completely random occurences coming together just perfectly). So why Evolution would ever be passed off as "Scientific" is beyond me.

The much more logical explination is Creation, that instead of any random fluctuations of dumb luck, that there in fact IS a supremely intelligent being. Once it can be proven that creatures can be supremely intelligent (that is to have limitless knowledge), the rest of the Creation theroy makes perfect sense.

[saden1]

Originally Posted by GTripp0012

Ultimately, my continuing belief in the Lord comes down to this. The theroy of evolution as it pertains to creating life says that life was begun through occurences of astronomically small probabilities. Ridiculously astronomically small. Would never, ever be duplicated again. But merely because it's possible, it's become a haven for "nonbelievers" who think that the Bible was a work of fiction.

The scientific method DEMANDS that an experiment be recreatable for it to be truly scientific. Evolution will likely never be recreated because of the nature of the theroy (A bunch of completely random occurences coming together just perfectly). So why Evolution would ever be passed off as "Scientific" is beyond me.

The much more logical explination is Creation, that instead of any random fluctuations of dumb luck, that there in fact IS a supremely intelligent being.

Evolution is not random, it took billions of years.

Mutation is random in the sense that it's not anticipatory of what's needed. Natural selection is anything but random. Natural selection is a guided process, guided not by any higher power, but simply by which genes survive and which genes don't survive. That's a non-random process. The animals that are best at whatever they do-hunting, flying, fishing, swimming, digging-whatever the species does, the individuals that are best at it are the ones that pass on the genes. It's because of this non-random process that lions are so good at hunting, antelopes so good at running away from lions, and fish are so good at swimming.

Evolution is akin to the learning processes we go throughout our lives. We learn from our mistakes and make sure we pass on lessons learned (ala traits) and skills to our descendants. It's how we get smarter. It's how we will continue to get smarter.

Once it can be proven that creatures can be supremely intelligent (that is to have limitless knowledge), the rest of the Creation theory makes perfect sense.

Limitless implies infinite and you cannot define infinity. In essence what you have just said is that creation theory can never be proven.

[RobH4413]

My favorite argument for a "god" was the first cause argument. I've always loved it...

You woke up this morning because your alarm clock went off. Your alive because your parents had sex. Your parents are alive because their parents had sex.

Every cause has an effect, and if you trace every cause further and further back through time, to the big bang for instance, what happened before that?

What was the "First Cause" to set everything in motion.

It proves that reason itself is flawed, we live in a foward flowing "time" where every action has a re-action. The problem is that time cannot exist, it's a figment of our silly little brains, and an eternal entity is the logical explanation.

However I just proved that logic is flawed in itself... so now I proved that I can't prove anything, so that leaves me with catch 22 after catch 22. It's funny thinking we can actually know something... but the truth is... we can't "know" anything in the true sense of the word.

It's 2:00am. I'm going to bed.

[SmootSmack]

When in doubt, consult the Simpsons

YouTube - The Simpsons - Myth of Creation

YouTube - An Unbiased Comparison