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TitaniumAlloy
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posted October 10, 2007 09:38 AM |
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This confuses me. When I say that I am waiting till this happens, I am wrong how Evolution works. (IE I said it was constant and we should be seeing such on a constant basis, and was told I misunderstood evolution).
Then when I say it takes a hiatus (because if it is not constant it would have to come in spurts) I am incorrect also. How can both be incorrect? This honestly confuses me.
Either my anti-bable fish is working over time, and I am speaking in martian backwards, or something is going wrong somewhere. Since there seems to be some fault in communication, I thought it would be best to wait till we could communicate better.
You never said it was on a constant basis. You have taken the spurts and bounds stance all along.
It is on a relatively constant basis, this is not refuted, it's just that as I have said your time scale is wrong.
I don't know how long you think it would take for an animal like a fly to evolve into an animal like a snake (for a start insects evolved directly from crustaceans and did not evolve into reptiles), but I assure you it is many hundred million years.
Not to mention that when one species evolves into another, the first doesn't give birth to the latter  It's a slow process where one slowly changes in isolation until it is no longer able to reproduce with the original species.
I'm sorry that you haven't seen this in the years you've been alive, but this doesn't discount evolution.
Actually, pretty much the opposite.
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John says to live above hell.
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TitaniumAlloy
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posted October 10, 2007 10:33 AM |
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Those who deride religions often complain that they use things in their religious text to explain things. Yet science does the same. It uses already 'proven' (by science) theories to validate itself. It's accurate because this experiment or that theory says it is. Not that I am saying it is not, but it is a double standard. I am just not willing to invoke that double standard. Even though I am pretty sure science is right, and most religions are off the mark, doesn't mean that science is right and that religions are off the mark.
Science is based on facts.
Religion is based on beliefs.
They are not one and the same.
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Mainly because unlike some I do not think the two mutually exclusive. Science and religion can both be correct. Spiritual enlightenment can ensure intellectual enlightenment. Never dismissing anything off hand, without any proof, just because it is easier to is not for me. Some say that it is impossible to prove a negative. Fine, then don't try. Focus on science, leave religion to those who want to believe. What is so threatening to science that the very possibility sends people into a tizzy?
Science and theism or deism aren't mutually exclusive.
Science and the Abrahamic god, it seems, are.
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Instead it is some try so hard to get people not to believe it is like the are zealots. Next step is with the pitchfork and torches. Why is it so important that just because you don't believe nobody else should? I don't ask you believe my way. I don't even expect you too. In fact my beliefs are so anti-mainstream if mainstream was the Nile River, my belief would be Pluto. I'm ok with that. To each their own. This is why I really don't like to debate, because I respect everybody's view. It feels like I am trying to shove my theory down everybodies throat. I hate that feeling.
TA, you and Corribus can think or believe as you choose. Including that I am a complete idiot that is delusional. That is your right. If I have caused any problems or gotten you upset about anything I appologise.
Who said it's important.
In fact it's far from it. Anyone who knows me in real life knows that I don't care a bit about anyone's religion, so long as they keep it to themselves. I'm not trying to make anyone believe anything. I just like the argument 
And as that quote goes;
"Why do born again christians make you wish that they were never born the first time?"
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John says to live above hell.
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Mytical
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posted October 10, 2007 11:08 AM |
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Just a small insignificant correction  .
Evolution and the Abrahamic god, it seems, are.
Science does not contend with "god" for the most part. Though evolution dissagrees with 'the genesis', science as a whole is another story. So far Evolution is a theory. It is only a theory. Since we don't have a time travel machine to go back in time to see how things really went, we need more evidence.
Believe me, both you and Corribus have made excellent arguements. Nothing you said has of yet disproven the exsistance of any higher power, even the christian god. Here is something to ponder...and be honest with yourself. Are there things that science can not explain?
Now once you have asked yourself that. Ask this question. What is science missing that would explain these things legitimately (not just "Hey they are delusional" but solid concrete proof). Now look out at the whole universe and think. We live on a tiny speck in a small solar system, within a minute galaxy. Do you honestly think that we know 1/1000000000th of 1% of anything? Science is still in it's infancy. We really need to question the 'status quo', and not take anything for granted.
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Message received.
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Nidhgrin
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posted October 10, 2007 11:57 AM |
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Edited by Nidhgrin at 11:57, 10 Oct 2007.
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Nice post Mytical.
Science is a tool to help understand the nature of things. Actually religion is just the same.
The difference is, the foundation of science is empirical evidence and research, while the foundation of religion is belief in ancient texts and tales.
Personally, I agree with your statement that a scientific theory is only as sound as the value of the evidence backing it up. With that in mind, you naturally take given 'facts' with a grain of salt, which is a healthy approach in my opinion. There was a time when there was sufficient proof for the world to be flat...
There are many things science does not have an answer to (yet). Additionally some accepted theories might be flawed. Like you say, life itself is extraordinary, as are the many events that occur in our lives. Even if everything could be explained with science, the very existance of life (as an individual unique human being) in the first place, remains a miracle. People who realize that, and pay attention to all the little things in life every day, are generally happier than people just longing for kicks or to reach big goals.
Most people I know have a need for spirituality. Symbols and markers connected to the major events in our lives play an important role. This spiritual need can be answered by a personal journey, with religion, and even with science
The thing with religion I personally do have a problem with, is that many times texts and stories are taken litterally and are assumed to be the thruth. As long as believers realize those thruths are only valid within the boundaries of their own religion, and are not absolute, all is well. I still hold on to my previous statement that litteral interpretation of religious texts leads to fanatism, and completely surpasses the original intention of the writers.
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Mytical
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posted October 10, 2007 12:07 PM |
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You put it much better then I could express it. Sometimes I have the ideas, but the expression of those ideas in a way that people can understand is something altogether different. Even though I write poetry, stories, ect, for some reason what comes out even I can't understand all the time. No clue why this is.
My main things are. Respect each other and each others beliefs. Work together, not in opposition of each other. Realize we don't have all the answers, in fact we only have a very small fraction. Don't take anything for granted..question everything, but be respectful about it. Mankind could get a lot farther, and do a lot better if he let such minor things like religion, beliefs, race, sex, ect go. We do so much when in constant contention with each other, just imagine what we could do working in unison.
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Elvin
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posted October 10, 2007 12:13 PM |
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We thing alike Nidhgrin. And exactly because I believe these things I don't often get up in such discussions. They can drag on and on with little to offer to me after some time.
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H5 is still alive and kicking, join us in the Duel Map discord server!
Map also hosted on Moddb
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TitaniumAlloy
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posted October 10, 2007 02:42 PM |
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Believe me, both you and Corribus have made excellent arguements. Nothing you said has of yet disproven the exsistance of any higher power, even the christian god. Here is something to ponder...and be honest with yourself. Are there things that science can not explain?
Yes. Obviously there is.
Remember science is not my religion, despite what a few people in this thread like to think seeing as for some reason it carries negative connotations.
Today's science is very primitive. But you have to admit, it promises more advancements than just accepting that god did everything, end of story
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Now once you have asked yourself that. Ask this question. What is science missing that would explain these things legitimately (not just "Hey they are delusional" but solid concrete proof). Now look out at the whole universe and think. We live on a tiny speck in a small solar system, within a minute galaxy. Do you honestly think that we know 1/1000000000th of 1% of anything? Science is still in it's infancy. We really need to question the 'status quo', and not take anything for granted.
lol.
I don't take anything for granted.
That's why I'm an atheist. Religion, esp. Christianity, preaches unquestioned obedience to authority in it's doctrine.
In my opinion, that in itself is a sin
But as I have said before in this thread, you can never disprove god with science, because the story keeps changing.
Originally the story was a literal old man in the sky, hell below the ground, who created the world and everything in it 4000 years ago, and it hasn't changed since, and that the universe revolves around the flat earth.
But as science slowly disproved more and more of the religious story, those parts which could be disproved were cut, until today the modern scientists religious story;
God set everything in motion at the beginning of time (as Corribus said) and everything else followed (evolution etc)
Which is more deism than anything, which is better by a long shot no doubt (as god no longer concerns himself with what we do in bed or reads our thoughts), but the story is so intangible now that it pretty much is, by definition, unprovable.
I could make up a story right now that you couldn't disprove. I have done before talking to The Death.
No science or technology could disprove it (save reading my mind and showing that I made it up, but I guess Jesus is dead now so it's a bit late)
I could say there's an invisible boogy monster who can't be percieved by any senses, exists outside the physical realm, can't be touched, never know he's there, no evidence of his existence etc.
I can say whatever I want short of "and he can't be disproved", but have the same effect. See what I mean?
So it's not strange or mighty or noble that you can't disprove god. But you can eliminate the idea as absurd, as is the boogey man.
And on that note, here's a nice video on Evangelicals
And that guy who asks for money so that god can create miracles hilarious
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Corribus
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posted October 10, 2007 04:51 PM |
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Quoting Mytical:
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I know what evolution is. It is a theory in which one species mutates to survive better in its environment.
No, you obviously don't know what evolution is, because your second statement is incorrect. There's no causality behind mutation. Mutation has no intention to improve an organism or not to improve an organism. For one thing, many have argued that organisms do not use genes to improve the survivability of organisms, but rather genes use organisms to improve the survivability of genes. It's an interesting notion, but besides that, mutation is random. Most mutations are probably deleterious.
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Sometimes these mutations are said to cause said species to 'evolve' into another species entirely. The initial process is supposed to have happened a long time ago (the ammount of time keeps growing larger it seems, though since the last time I checked they may have decided on a specific time.) Then it supposedly had another spurt durring the age of dinosaurs. I am not clear on this point, but there may have been a few more spurts..but then millions of years has passed and Evolution has taken a siesta I guess. Only explination why we are not seeing new species forming everywhere. It's on a convienent coffee break.
I'm not sure where you're getting your information, but there is still a some active study into whether evolution occurs in discrete steps, or whether it is a "smooth" gradual process. Mutation of course is occurring all the time, but things get more complex when you take evolution from the micro- to macro-levels. The issue of speciation is another whole matter which has not completely been ironed out, either. The problem is that a lot of people like to try to boil a very, very complex theory like evolution into a simple one or two sentence explanation and then pretend like they understand it, or, worse, pretend like they know what's wrong with it. *I* certainly don't understand the half of it, mostly because I'm not an evolutionary biologist. What annoys me is when people who know almost nothing about evolution construct these inelegant, overly simplistic strawman caricatures of a sophisticated theory that has been in development for many decades and which has countless volumes of data in support of it, and then proceed to point to putative weaknesses in their own constructed version of the theory as evidence that the theory makes no sense or is severely lacking.
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Did evolution take place? I absolutely believe it did.
It did. There's really not any doubt. The only uncertainty lies in the details.
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Is the earth billions of years old? Eh that depends on IF carbon dating is accurate, and IF we are interpreting the data we see correctly if it is accurate.
You can't use carbon dating to date the age of the earth. The halflife of carbon is too short. So no, the question of the earth's age does not depend on the accuracy of carbon dating at all. But for the record, there are no real problems with radiometric dating.
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However, evolution does not preclude the divine.
No, it does not.
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I am talking what I personally have seen, experienced, and know about first hand. See if there is nothing beyond this life, that means there are no spirits, yet I have seen not 1 but 4 in my life. Easy to discount that though. I could have been hallucinating or suffer brain damage.
A more likely explanation, I'm afraid.
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The data would suggest that coincidence and statistical probability will only get you so far. Then you have to start looking for other answers. "
Actually, you don't.
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When I say that I am waiting till this happens, I am wrong how Evolution works. (IE I said it was constant and we should be seeing such on a constant basis, and was told I misunderstood evolution).
Example. I design a special car when allows you to move exactly one quadrillionth of an inch per hour. That's a very slow speed. I start you off at 12 noon and come back in one hour, at which time you've moved exactly one quadrillionth of an inch. However, if I tell my friend Joe to also come back in one hour, but don't explain the special type of car, he'd be quite justified in saying that you didn't move at all. Only after a few quadrillion hours might your change in position be noticeable. Humans have known about evolution for what - a little over a century? The timescale for evolution is on the scale of what - millions of years? And you expect to be able to see evolutionary change over a century?
That's a very simplistic analogy, for sure, but it serves to demonstrate that your timescales are just way off. Something may look stationary to you, when in fact it's just moving very, very, very, very, very slowly.
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I have experienced things that lead me to believe that something beyond what we can understand exsists.
Nobody denies that there are things beyond what we currently understand. However, where I and religious people differ is that I believe such currently non-understandable things can eventually be rationalized in terms of logic and science, where religious people believe (metaphorically, speaking of course) a giant pink unicorn is the answer.
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Those who deride religions often complain that they use things in their religious text to explain things. Yet science does the same. It uses already 'proven' (by science) theories to validate itself. It's accurate because this experiment or that theory says it is. Not that I am saying it is not, but it is a double standard. I am just not willing to invoke that double standard.
Could you explain more clearly what the double standard is? I didn't get it at all.
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Mainly because unlike some I do not think the two mutually exclusive. Science and religion can both be correct.
A dangerous, tricky statement. True, science does not disprove (nor try to disprove) God. You can believe in God *and* believe in scientific principles. But at the same time, for example, you cannot believe that lightning comes from Zeus and simultaneously believe in the scientific explanation. You cannot believe that God created the world 5000 years ago AND that it is billions of years old. The problem is that as science continues to progress, the religious/superstitious person will continue to have to abandon or modify aspects of his/her thelogical beliefs if he/she wants to continue to maintain that delicate dualism in their belief system.
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Why is it so important that just because you don't believe nobody else should?
You can believe whatever you want. But when you come to a place like this and state your beliefs, and furthermore state them in the context of wrong information about scientific theories, I feel compelled to correct you. Believe what you want, but at least make an educated decision about it.
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So far Evolution is a theory. It is only a theory.
Oh for the love of... I get so tired of this "only a theory" argument? *sigh* Do you know what is the definition of a scientific theory?
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Are there things that science can not explain.
Short answer: maybe. Long answer: Is there anything that is observable that science cannot explain? No, I do not believe so. Not a provable statement, of course, but if there's any aspect of belief or religion to the discipline of science, it is the belief that all empricial observations are empirically explainable. Put another way, if there IS anything out there that is not explainable by science, we'd never know about it.
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Respect each other and each others beliefs.
You can believe what you want. I'm not going to kill you for it (that's what many religious people do). But just because I try to argue with you that I feel your beliefs are wrong, that does not mean I don't respect your right to believe whatever silliness you want to believe. And btw talking about your beliefs is a lot different than spreading misinformation about scientific theories. If you want to tell me God created the Earth 5000 years ago, that's fine. I think you'd be wrong in that case, but if you want to live with such silly beliefs it's not doing me any harm. However, if you go around saying that radiocarbon dating is a conspiracy and doesn't work, or that evolution is about snakes giving birth to porcupines, then I'll be damned if I'm not going to correct you. I do *NOT* have to respect your right to spread bad information.
Quoting Nidhgrin:
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Science is a tool to help understand the nature of things. Actually religion is just the same.
Religion doesn't help you understand anything. It's a placeholder for what you cannot, or do not want to, understand.
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There was a time when there was sufficient proof for the world to be flat...
Really? When? Rhetorical question. There was never proof or evidence that the world was flat. A very common misconception. It was a belief, and one not held for long. Even the ancient greeks had evidence that the earth was round. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_earth
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Nidhgrin
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posted October 10, 2007 06:04 PM |
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Religion doesn't help you understand anything. It's a placeholder for what you cannot, or do not want to, understand.
Wrong. It seems you've missed my point entirely! To people who believe in Christianity for instance, god helps you understand why life on earth exists.
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Really? When? Rhetorical question. There was never proof or evidence that the world was flat. A very common misconception. It was a belief, and one not held for long. Even the ancient greeks had evidence that the earth was round. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_earth
I know in ancient Greece, and perhaps earlier in Egypt, there were scientists who thought the earth was round. In the middle ages, the common theory was for the world to be flat. Even scientist thought they had proof for that.
@Elvin: You're right, and that's the reason I quit posting in this thread before. There's not much room for constructive discussion when participants want to prove their right no matter what, while listening but not hearing what others say.
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Corribus
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posted October 10, 2007 06:55 PM |
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Edited by Corribus at 18:58, 10 Oct 2007.
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Wrong. It seems you've missed my point entirely! To people who believe in Christianity for instance, god helps you understand why life on earth exists.
If that's your point, it certainly isn't a very good one. Is this what understanding means to you? Understanding to me is only useful if you understand the truth, not just rhetoric. Gaining correct information. Understanding is not a subjective term. You can't tell two different people two different explanations of how a car works and have them both really understand the truth of how a car works. If I tell person A that a car works by a combustion reaction compressing and expanding gas, which pushes a piston, which eventually turns a wheel, and I turn person B that a car works by miniature elves who live under the hood and use pixie dust to propel the car forward, both people may come to understand my differing explanations (by which I mean, they may understand the language), but do they both really understand - KNOW - the truth?
Religion doesn't help you understand anything. If you start with the premise that lightning exists - that is, you can see it - you now need an explanation. A religious explanation is that Zeus was pissed off with humans and sent lightning down as punishment. But does a person who believes this explanation really understand how lightning works? Forget for a moment that we do actually have a scientific explanation for lightning. I'm talking about belief by itself. Belief does not answer questions and does not invite inquiry. Belief is when someone tells you something and you take it as true. You believe Zeus creates lightning but that does not make it true, not have you gained any real understanding of how lightning works. You are not closer to the truth by simply believing something to be so.
To religious people, God helps them understand why the Earth exists? Ignoring for a second that there is no real truth being gained - only belief in what priests are telling you - I'm not even sure the religious people "know" WHY God created the Earth. That's a theological debate in and of itself. But aside from that, if we focus on the religious "answer" to HOW the earth exists - does religion really help you understand HOW the earth exists? There's a bunch of language, which people believe in for no reason other than its written in a book, which says such and such happened to make the Earth come about. But does blindly believing in that language - which is the essence of religion and faith, blindly believing with no evidence - bring you any closer to really understanding anything? I don't think so. Frankly I prefer to use MY mind and brain to gain knowledge of my surroundings firsthand, rather than relying on what some dusty old book tells me is the answer.
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I know in ancient Greece, and perhaps earlier in Egypt, there were scientists who thought the earth was round. In the middle ages, the common theory was for the world to be flat. Even scientist thought they had proof for that.
Check again.
First, let's forget for a moment that there were no scientists - not in the modern sense - during the middle ages, AND many that even came close to practicing real science were often persecuted and executed at the hands of the Catholic Church, so since there was no real scientific method to speak of, most officially endorsed "knowledge" about the world at the time was based mostly on belief, and beliefs that were tightly controlled by the Church, or a small fraction of scientific and philosophical texts remaining from antiquity (also controlled by the church). In the Classical world, where many scientists/philosophers did practice rudimentary forms of modern science, evidence WAS acquired that led most people to believe the world was round. Much of that work was lost after the collapse of the Roman Empire, though.
Second, despite the efforts of the Church to stomp out "heretical" scientific thoughts in many areas, most people in the middle ages - even within the Church - believed also that the world was round. It is a common misconception that Columbus was the daring individual that thought the world was round while everyone else thought it was flat. I gave you a link to the wiki article on the subject, which you obviously didn't take a look at. Quoting a few key passages:
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With the end of Roman civilization, Western Europe entered the Middle Ages with great difficulties that affected the continent's intellectual production. Most scientific treatises of classical antiquity (in Greek) were unavailable, leaving only simplified summaries and compilations. Still, the dominant textbooks of the Early Middle Ages supported the sphericity of the Earth. For example: many early medieval manuscripts of Macrobius include maps of the Earth, including the antipodes, zonal maps showing the Ptolemaic climates derived from the concept of a spherical Earth and a diagram showing the Earth (labeled as globus terrae, the sphere of the Earth) at the center of the hierarchically ordered planetary spheres.[27] Images of some of these features can be found in Dream of Scipio.
Europe's view of the shape of the Earth in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages may be best expressed by the writings of early Christian scholars:
The article goes on to describe the views of Christian scholars who wrote about a round earth, and also describes pictures of a round earth in many midieval books and insignia.
Furthermore (paying close attention to the enboldened text:
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A recent study of medieval concepts of the sphericity of the Earth noted that "since the eighth century, no cosmographer worthy of note has called into question the sphericity of the Earth."[36] However, the work of these intellectuals may not have had significant influence on public opinion, and it is difficult to tell what the wider population may have thought of the shape of the Earth, if they considered the question at all.
The modern misconception that people of the Middle Ages believed that the Earth was flat first entered the popular imagination in the nineteenth century, thanks largely to the publication of Washington Irving's fantasy The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus in 1828.
Anyway, the article goes on to describe how advances in islamic astronomy in the 1100s gave even more evidence for the sphericity of the earth and shaped lated medieval thought. Dante's Divine Comedy portrayed the Earth as a sphere. The insignia of the Holy Roman Empire depicted the earth as a sphere. Also, "Reinhard Krüger, a professor for Romance literature at the University of Stuttgart (Germany), has discovered more than 100 medieval Latin and vernacular writers from the late antiquity to the 15th century who were all convinced that the earth was round like a ball."
Finally, particularly noteworthy:
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The common misconception that people before the age of exploration believed that Earth was flat entered the popular imagination after Washington Irving's publication of The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus in 1828. In the United States, this belief persists in the popular imagination, and is even repeated in some widely read textbooks. Previous editions of Thomas Bailey's The American Pageant stated that "The superstitious sailors ... grew increasingly mutinous...because they were fearful of sailing over the edge of the world"; however, no such historical account is known.[61] Actually, sailors were probably among the first to know of the curvature of Earth from daily observations — seeing how shore landscape features (or masts of other ships) gradually descend/ascend near the horizon.
The Flammarion woodcut. Flammarion's caption translates to "A medieval missionary tells that he has found the point where heaven and Earth meet..."During the 19th century, the Romantic conception of a European "Dark Age" gave much more prominence to the Flat Earth model than it ever possessed historically.
The widely circulated woodcut of a man poking his head through the firmament of a flat Earth to view the mechanics of the spheres, executed in the style of the 16th century cannot be traced to an earlier source than Camille Flammarion's L'Atmosphère: Météorologie Populaire (Paris, 1888, p. 163).[62] The woodcut illustrates the statement in the text that a medieval missionary claimed that "he reached the horizon where the Earth and the heavens met", an anecdote that may be traced back to Voltaire, but not to any known medieval source. In its original form, the woodcut included a decorative border that places it in the 19th century; in later publications, some claiming that the woodcut did, in fact, date to the 16th century, the border was removed. Flammarion, according to anecdotal evidence, had commissioned the woodcut himself. In any case, no source of the image earlier than Flammarion's book is known.
In Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians, Jeffrey Russell (professor of history at University of California, Santa Barbara) claims that the Flat Earth theory is a fable used to impugn pre-modern civilization, especially that of the Middle Ages in Europe. Today essentially all professional medievalists[weasel words] agree with Russell that the "medieval flat Earth" is a nineteenth-century fabrication, and that the few verifiable "flat Earthers" were the exception.
So you I think will now agree that the "people of the middle ages believed the earth was flat" statement which you have repeated is nothing more than a myth, and you are wrong, unless you care to cite some evidence in support of your claim? Thanks.
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Nidhgrin
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posted October 10, 2007 08:45 PM |
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A. I am not a religious person. All I'm trying to do is keep an open mind, and try to comprehend what religion means to believers. Obviously, you're only interested in your personal point of view.
B. You still didn't get my point. Besides, you want to have semantic discussions here instead of debating content? Fine, but not with me.
C. I'm not going into the earth being flat thing. It was meant as an example to illustrate that scientific conclusions can be off the mark. Agreed, maybe not the best example I could have come up with... But if your so called modern scientists are so much more infallible than their medieval ancestors, does that mean they never draw the wrong conclusions anymore? Give me a break!
I won't continue this conversation on this level.
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Corribus
Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
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posted October 10, 2007 09:18 PM |
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Edited by Corribus at 21:26, 10 Oct 2007.
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A. I am not a religious person. All I'm trying to do is keep an open mind, and try to comprehend what religion means to believers. Obviously, you're only interested in your personal point of view.
I'm not. I asked what you believe understanding means, and underlined what it means to me. If you believe that accepting without question whatever rhetoric some random person spews to you is defined as "understanding", then I feel sorry for you. Religion does not lead to understanding. If you can some how explain to me how it DOES, other than saying something as trivial as "to religious people it gives understanding", then I'll listen with an open mind. But so far you've said nothing meaningful.
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B. You still didn't get my point. Besides, you want to have semantic discussions here instead of debating content? Fine, but not with me.
What semantic discussion are you referring to? The meaning of understanding? I think discussing what your meaning of the word is versus my meaning of the word is important. If the meaning of the word "understanding" is different for the both of us, then that obviously is important. It goes beyond a simple semantics argument. The definition of words prior to discussion is important; otherwise you end up discussing different things.
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C. I'm not going into the earth being flat thing. It was meant as an example to illustrate that scientific conclusions can be off the mark. Agreed, maybe not the best example I could have come up with...
You brought it up, not I, so don't get angry when I illustrate how bad of an example it is. It does not illustrate that scientific conclusions can be off the mark at all, because it is not, and was never, a scientific conclusion, nor was it even a simple belief held by a majority of people living in the middle ages as you contended. It is misconception held by many people, plain and simple. I hope you'll pardon me for pointing out that you said something that is simply incorrect.
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But if your so called modern scientists are so much more infallible than their medieval ancestors, does that mean they never draw the wrong conclusions anymore? Give me a break!
Furthermore, I might add that my refutation of your wrong contention that "well scientists once believed the earth was flat" statement does not mean that I believe scientists are infallable or that they never make erronious conclusion, only that "the earth was once thought to be flat" is not an example of such. So, I ask you to please not put words into my mouth.
Now putting aside your factually incorrect example, if the point you were trying convey is that scientists make mistakes too, then perhaps you'd be kind enough to explain why you feel that such a point is important to get across, and expecially what it has to do with religion.
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Corribus
Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
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posted October 10, 2007 11:49 PM |
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Edited by Corribus at 23:51, 10 Oct 2007.
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Quoting Mytical:
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Actually it has everything to do with it. When an inconsistacy or minor error (after all, even if divinely inspired the writers of all religions were human) appear it is attacked and jumped on by 'zealots' of the scientific community.
Example?
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Yet when such things happen in science "Oh it was just an experiment, we'll get it right next time." Which is one thing I mean by double standard. That is something that really bothers me.
Actually it's quite the opposite. The difference between science and religion is that scientists are continually refining its theories, continually discarding what is wrong or no longer relevant, continually challenging itself to get it right, continually testing and questioning. In fact the very basis of science is the belief that there is more to try to understand and that what we think we know is probably not the whole story. For the religious the fundamental answers are already neatly spelled out. There is no need to question the fundamental truth.
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It's like people are incapable of acknowledging that science can be wrong.
I'm sorry you feel that way.
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If you want to think that science can never be wrong because it is just a process of experimentation (or any other way you wish to phrase it) then to me that becomes a 'faith' and not a 'belief'.
We've been down this road before. Please quote for me where I said that science cannot be wrong.
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My faith is that there is something that science can not measure, understand, or comprehend. My belief is that sciece will eventually prove such things are legitimate.
A very funny statement. If science cannot measure something, how will science prove that such a thing exists? That's like saying that some day you may be able to hear something that makes no sound. This is impossible insofar as the very definition of "to hear" is "to perceive sound".
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la_ultima_hora
Adventuring Hero
STFU or DDOS
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posted October 11, 2007 05:29 AM |
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i was born...baptised...brought up as a catholic...blah blah....but i do not follow the catholic Faith....
im wiccan
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~ Helsinki Vampire ~
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TitaniumAlloy
Honorable
Legendary Hero
Professional
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posted October 11, 2007 09:09 AM |
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All quoting Mytical:
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Actually it has everything to do with it. When an inconsistacy or minor error (after all, even if divinely inspired the writers of all religions were human) appear it is attacked and jumped on by 'zealots' of the scientific community. Yet when such things happen in science "Oh it was just an experiment, we'll get it right next time." Which is one thing I mean by double standard. That is something that really bothers me. It's like people are incapable of acknowledging that science can be wrong. Like evolution. It doesn't even enter the thinking process that they could have it all wrong.
This is far from double standard.
Religous texts are taken as the word of god and are meant to be flawless. These are the words that billions upon billions of lives over the millenia have hung on, people have been killed over, lives spent following their every meaning.
There is no margin for error. They are taken as absolute truth, so when something is found to be in stark contradiction to what actually happened, then isn't it ok to question it?
Scientific theories are different altogether. When a scientific theory is questioned with contradicting evidence (as you say it, 'zealots jump on it'), this is a good thing. Scientific theories can be changed, they are not absolute. New evidence means our knowledge and understanding is taken one step further, so scientists spend so much time trying to find further evidence, not to merely support their argument, but to find out what is really happening.
HOWEVER, Most people, yourself included, criticise evolution without a SHRED of contradicting evidence, and more often than not no real understanding of evolution or why they have a problem with it.
And that more accurately describes the situation here.
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If you are not interested in considering that evolution can't be wrong, that's your thing.
It could be wrong. We could all be the figment of the imagination of a piece of purple cheese.
But until someone comes up with an argument that better explains the world we live in, evolution is the go.
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If you want to think that science can never be wrong because it is just a process of experimentation (or any other way you wish to phrase it) then to me that becomes a 'faith' and not a 'belief'.
No, you just don't understand what he said.
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My faith is that there is something that science can not measure, understand, or comprehend. My belief is that sciece will eventually prove such things are legitimate.
You just contradicted yourself... 
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Religious texts are tools (imo). They teach things like : Being nice to others, respection other people, harmony and unity. Sure people often twist them to mean things they don't and use them as excuses to harm others. Then again, a 'scientist' discovered atomic energy, and look how that can be used. I seriously doubt anybody would blame Albert Einstien for Hiroshima (my appologies if either is misspelled). That and there is no proof that they are wrong.
If the morals of religious texts were followed by people today, then the world would be a far worse place. There are things in the bible which are just morally bankrupt.
I don't think I can put it better than this picture:
Those warnings aren't twisted. Alot of people don't know what's actually written in some of those hallowed passages and if they do they have been desensitised to it from a young age, as religion is so well ingrained in our daily lives.
(like the story of Churchill's son who was never exposed to religion until he had a bet he could read the whole bible in like a fortnight and is famously quoted to find it hilarious, saying "god is such a ****!"
As for the beloved passage of the 10 commandmens, well you know my opinion on those.
You don't need to read the bible to know that it is good to be nice to others, harmony, unity, respect. These things are good regardless of god, and so we don't need to study god to study the good.
The Bible may be a tool in that sense, but it is a very inefficient and possibly disastrous tool
And if reading a book about being nice to people is the only reason that people follow religion, well.. I could write a book right now saying "be nice to people... be kind and all that..." but I don't think anyone would find that useful, or a 'tool'
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There is a funny little saying that I've heard on Star Trek: Voyager from T'vok (or however you spell that name). "Science can be used by somebody to explain anything. Even opposit things." Simply means that if you look hard enough you will come up with a way to use science to convince anybody of anything.
I don't know why you hate science so much.
Maybe we should get rid of science altogether and go back to being apes... oh wait a second
And this again demonstrates a complete disregard for modern scientific method. Anything anything said to be 'proved' using this method will be investigated and discounted by others, and anything not using this method will not be taken seriously.
*takes a break*
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Religious scholors are and have currently tried to reconsile the bible with current scientific research. So they are trying to learn from their misinterpretations much like scientist are learn from failed experiments.
Some are. This is better than nothing (although it kinda makes religion obsolete, and is a bit try hard) but there are just so many "born again" and fanatics out there it's overwhelming (or my favourite Evangelists...)
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So the time line of the bible is off. Some people, like myself, do not see this as a set back, but a reason to examine things and make new conclusions. We may be wrong, but we are 'experimenting' until we get it correct. Learn, adapt, grow.
If you keep learning and adapting the whole bible disappears, the whole christianity disappears, and you're back to deism (where the god set everything in motion and now has no longer any effect, ie. god is big bang) because it's the only thing that could possibly work, as a deist god can't really be disproven.
And from there you can take the approach that this cannot possibly affect us or be known of, so should be ignored altogether especially since the attractive feature of heaven (if we're nice and not gay) disappears from the equation.
You'll notice through history how religion has evolved... Originally it was polytheism, like the romans and modern day Hinduism, but this evolved into the now dominant monotheism, and it seems religions is destined to drop one more down to atheism
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Evolution may be wrong. Just like any scientific theory (call it what you will, lets not argue semantics over the word theory), what is absolute today might not be absolute tommorrow. Like flight. Experiments were done, they failed, so it was "Scientifically impossible for man to fly with or without aid."
This theory wasn't proven wrong... you could say that people trying to fly with wings were the experiments to find out the truth. Now we know.
If someone comes out and flies without aid, then this will have been wrong.
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I will be the first to admit my beliefs are still in the infancy stage, because they do change. When new evidence is supplied, I will change my belief. So far no concrete evidence has been supplied to change my mind.
There is mountains of concrete evidence for evolution, open your eyes...
seriously, do yourself a favour and pick up a book on it.
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You say religious fanatics and evolution 'scientist' are very different. I say they are the exact same. Neither will even harbor the thought they may be wrong.
LMAO. i love how you picture scientists like some evil force trying to destroy god.
The scientific community has NO problem with being wrong in general, just possibly some arrogant individuals might not want some other people to get some credit.
So you can't take that card, sorry.
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Do you honestly think our observences on this tiny speck of a world, in our own small little solar system, that resides in a rather insignificant galaxy makes us the ultimate authority? Or that we even know a small fraction of a precent of what is out there? No, sorry. We have a long way to go. But it does not matter. It is inconsiquential.
I answered it, but it was ignored I guess
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Corribus, TA I appologise. I've failed my own test, got to the point where my being wrong could not penetrate my own skull. I still think you both need to at least start questioning, and that you need to look at both sides, but not near as much as me. Never take anything for granted, even 'scientific proof'. Always question, never settle.
*sigh*
I started out as a firm believer who really wanted to go to heaven.
Then I saw that this was a selfish desire over a childish idea and questioned the bible, priests telling me inane stories in church and stubborn fanatics.
So I stopped believing in god. The title of this thread is a dead giveaway though you saying I don't question things "as much as you" is kinda making me think you don't even know what this thread is called.
So I don't take anything for granted, thanks for the offer though. I've just realized how wrong religion is, by questioning authority.
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John says to live above hell.
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Gallow
Bad-mannered
Known Hero
Avenger
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posted October 11, 2007 10:02 AM |
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There is mountains of concrete evidence for evolution, open your eyes...
seriously, do yourself a favour and pick up a book on it.Quote:
yes just few bones of humans,and most of them very very incomplete,with that they cant proof anything...(unless you like to think we came from the trees..)
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So I stopped believing in god.
There is thousand of persons who dont believe,but is their problem,their lack of faith,just seeing in the "world" and trusting more in a scientist(i dont say that they are bad,just some thinks that they know more than all the human history...)maybe the fault if from the parents,or the society,like in the bible i saw once,but is better put it this way:
Environmental scientists say that we:
a. Fast exhaust all natural resources we need for life on this planet.
b. Are disastrously polluting land, rivers, seas and the atmosphere with our chemical products,
its residues and the emission of all kinds of gases.
c. Endanger the future health and even existence of all life by the increasing possibilities to
intervene in the complicated biostructures of life and in natural laws and processes.
And we do not know - in spite of assuring words of leading scientists - where it all will lead
to. The possibility of nuclear disasters like the one of Tsjernobil, causing changes in the
chromosomes, is also a real threat to the health of future generations.
Scientists are worried by the increasing pollution of seas and oceans:
a. Through nuclear wastes and shipwrecks with nuclear engines and weapons, lying on the bottom
of the seas.
b. Through all the chemicals poured into the seas each day. But also land and rivers are polluted by
all the chemicals scattered over its surface and by nuclear pollution.
c. Through disasters with ships full of crude oil or chemicals.
Scientists and politicians are working hard to solve these problems on a global scale and prevent the predicted environmental disasters. But very little or no progress at all is being made due to conflicting interests of nations and the protection of national industries.
This was true at the first writing of this article in 2000
This was still true in november 2006. The international conference in Africa failed to make the important international agreements
Scientists are certain that if the industrialized nations continue to live and work as they are doing now, they will bring over themselves environmental disasters of enormous proportions. These predicted disasters resemble in a remarkable way the plagues of the Apocalypse. It is indeed a dark future we face on this planet if mankind does not repent of its wrong doings and turn with humility and integrity to its Creator, who alone knows and understands all the powers and structures of the natural systems we live in and so vitally need.
The seven bowls
As John continued to look with the opened eyes of his spirit he saw seven angels and each one of them received a bowl. These bowls present the last woes upon the earth, so is said. The plagues of these bowls are therefore the final miseries of man's history in its present rebellious state.
Chapter 16:2, the first bowl. The earth is hit, man is plagued by a malignant tumor. It could well be that the enormous increase of all kinds of cancers is the realization of the outpouring of this first bowl.
Chapter 16:3, the second bowl. The sea is hit. The contents of the bowl make the waters like 'blood of a dead a dead man.' The waters changes to a dark red color. The pollution is obviously fatal for all the creatures in the seas. We are now living in the days according to scientists that even the oceans are getting more and more polluted and the fish population is threatened.
Chapter 16:4, the third bowl. The rivers and water sources are hit, something like the blood is thrown into the water and they become also polluted and look like blood. Just remember that already now the water supply for the population of this planet becomes a problem and scientists are studying what must be done to secure enough fresh water in the future.
Chapter 16:8, the fourth bowl. The sun became too hot, its rays cause devastating heat. People can obviously not stay in direct sunlight. This problem is emerging also in these days as the ozonlayer makes the sunlight dangerous and hotter.
Chapter 16:10, the fifth bowl. The center of mankind's evil government is hit. There is darkness and there is terrible pain caused by sores.They cursed God for their torments and did not consider repentance. It is no secret that because of chemical and nuclear pollutions diseases with sores and tumors increase.
Chapter 16:12, the sixth bowl. The river Euphrates dried up. The Euphrates was the border of the Roman Empire in the time of John. Beyond this river there lived peoples, that were from time to time a real threat to the stability of the Empire. John sees how the river, the natural border of this North-eastern region of the empire, dried up and through this the whole stability of the empire is endangered. The access of enemies has become easy. Just think how easy it is today by use of the modern weapons - there are hardly any natural borders left - to destabilize nations and indeed the whole global community.
The distrust between nations and the great antagonism between peoples causing wars is generated and fed by spiritual powers of evil, wickedness and uncleanness, represented here as frogs. Eventually they will combine all powers against the people, who keep the faith in the Great Creator.
Chapters 16:17-21, the seventh bowl. Now comes the final plague. There is a great release of power, all natural forces unite in a destructive action. There is a great earthquake, the biggest in the history of this planet. The pride of human achievement, the great city, falls into three pieces, indicating that she is fatally destroyed. Big hailstones are falling from the sky and everywhere are earthquakes, causing islands to disappear in the sea. Could it be that the earth is hit by a comet, a meteorite? Scientists are sure that the earth was once hit by a gigantic comet, causing all prehistoric animals to die. They say it could happen again, but nobody knows when.
The sad thing from the point of view and the faith of John is that proud mankind does still not understand that it needs the protection and power of her Creator, the Almighty God. People continue to blame God for all that has come over them, they do not repent of their godlessness and they do not realize that the only way to safety is to relate to the One, who understands all these forces and is able to control them. Just remember Jesus calming the storm on the lake of Galilee with one simple command: "Peace, be still." The great powers of this planet and the sky are above the manipulation of man. It is prophesied and even stated by Jesus Christ that they will increase in frightening action in the end time. If man was living in fellowship with God, He could exercise faith, inspired by the Holy Spirit to subdue these powers and cause the earth to come to rest; read Genesis 1:26; 28.
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TitaniumAlloy
Honorable
Legendary Hero
Professional
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posted October 11, 2007 10:27 AM |
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yes just few bones of humans,and most of them very very incomplete,with that they cant proof anything...(unless you like to think we came from the trees..)
hehe. I like this quote.
I think I might use it.
(unless you like to think we came from the trees..)
There we go. The heart of why you reject so much evidence of evolution, because you don't WANT to believe it. Just like a person doesn't want to know when their mother died, or their white man in the sky isn't real. You're in denial.
And please don't make me go over the evidence, because for this reason you are so stubborn it will just fly right over you.
But the immutability of species preached by the bible is completely refuted by changing gene frequencies that still exist today.
You could examine homologous features, comparative embryology, vestigial structures, genetic linkage groups, amino acid sequenes of proteins, DNA comparative hybridisation just to name a few. It's more than just a few bones, you would just never admit it.
No other theory fits the evidence in an even remotely close fashion.
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There is thousand of persons who dont believe,but is their problem,their lack of faith,just seeing in the "world" and trusting more in a scientist(i dont say that they are bad,just some thinks that they know more than all the human history...)maybe the fault if from the parents,or the society,like in the bible i saw once,
You say lack of faith like it's a bad thing.
If I told you that you are surrounded right now by 1000 invisible flying cups of hot chocolate that move away from you swiftly so you can never touch them, would you believe me?
No.
Because of your lack of faith in me (hopefully the same would follow for anyone who told you this, even a preacher) and what I say.
This is a good thing, because it does not make sense, even though you can't prove I'm wrong. "There is no evidence for them" one might say, but there is no evidence that they aren't there, the 1000 cups of hot chocolate. It just makes no sense and there is no point in believing it.
I don't see how this is any different to believing in what some Priest tells you about a man who came back from the dead, but we'll ignore that for the moment.
Not believing everything you're told is a good thing, but the words 'belief' and 'faith' seem so righteous and so noble and carry positive connotations, when really blind faith is just synonymous with foolishness coupled with gullibility.
So yes, I do have a lack of faith, and in this I have the capacity to learn.
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The sad thing from the point of view and the faith of John is that proud mankind does still not understand that it needs the protection and power of her Creator, the Almighty God. People continue to blame God for all that has come over them, they do not repent of their godlessness and they do not realize that the only way to safety is to relate to the One, who understands all these forces and is able to control them. Just remember Jesus calming the storm on the lake of Galilee with one simple command: "Peace, be still." The great powers of this planet and the sky are above the manipulation of man. It is prophesied and even stated by Jesus Christ that they will increase in frightening action in the end time. If man was living in fellowship with God, He could exercise faith, inspired by the Holy Spirit to subdue these powers and cause the earth to come to rest; read Genesis 1:26; 28.
How does this book not sicken you?
Does this God not resemble a vicious, jealous, greedy dictator hellbent on either total control over the people or, failing that, total annihilation of the most violent and disgusting kind?
"Worship me and follow my rules, or I will plague you with diseases, pollute your seas, scorch you with the sun, and destroy you all."
How can you worship such a person?
If that is God, then I don't want to go to heaven.
But if that's what you want to believe, that's fine, but it doesn't scare me in the slightest. Might make a good Tom Clancy novel though.
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John says to live above hell.
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Corribus
Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
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posted October 11, 2007 06:36 PM |
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Edited by Corribus at 18:42, 11 Oct 2007.
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Quoting Mytical:
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Religious scholors are and have currently tried to reconsile the bible with current scientific research.
Here's the difference.
I will do you a favor and not respond to every line of your post individually. So here is my response to everything you wrote all at once.
Many religious people are forced to modify their religious beliefs in the wake of scientific discovery IF they want to continue maintaining a tangential (mutually exclusive) relationship between their faith and their empirical knowledge. The process of discarding religious beliefs that are directly at odds with current scientific knowledge is often slow and prone to resistance, but most people are sensible and come around eventually. MOST people do not believe the Earth is actually 5000 years old, even though that can be taken from a literal interpretation of the Bible. When scientific discoveries are made that contradict religion, these religious people re-evaluate religious texts and purposely look for new ways that old passages can be interpreted so that consistency can be maintained. This usually involves new interpretations that are less literal and more metaphorical.
When it comes to actual physical beliefs (by which I mean, religious beliefs pertaining to physical phenomena, such as the creation, evolution, the existence of the Great Flood, etc.) science is the largest catalyst for change. Religious belief systems have a very large moment of inertia. People don't like to change their religious belief systems because doing so undermines a major purpose of religious beliefs: that is, that they are psychological and/or emotional support systems designed to protect and insulate the fragile human mind from the uncertainty of the unknown, from the harshness of reality, and from the real potential likelihood of human insignificance. The thought of death and eternal nothingness are frightening; eternal life and heaven as rewards for a life well-lived are comforting answers to what happens after we die. The thought that we are the products of millennia of mere random fluctuations of chemical reactions is unsettling and goes against our egotistical notions that we are more important, that we serve a greater purpose; that a supernatural being created us in his image to rule over the Earth and all His creation lends a purpose to our existence and gives us reason for living. When we change our beliefs, it is like ripping off the blankets on a cold winter morning. We feel naked, psychologically, and so there is no real natural, intrinsic drive to do that EXCEPT for the fact that, being creatures evolved to interact with the physical world, we also do not like condradictions between what we see and what we think. When our eyes tell us something that clearly contradicts those cherished beliefs, the religious person in such a quandary will do one one of two things:
(1) Disbelieve what they observe (much more easily done when someone else is doing the observation or they don't understand the way the observation was observed) and persist in their belief exactly as it was before.
(2) Modify the old belief in such a way that it is consistent with the observation but also such that the old belief still maintains its integrity and can thus still act as a comforting blanket.
Actually a third option exists, which is to completely discard the belief, accept the harsh reality of the universe and believe totally that what is observed is all there is.
So when, for example, a radiological dating of the earth puts it at ~4.5 Billion years old, in obvious contradiction to the Bible's teaching, some religious people will discard the observation entirely, grasping desperately at perceived flaws in the experimental design or instrumentation, even though they aren't professionals and don't understand either. But rejection of scientific data, even on ridiculous grounds, preserves their belief systems and makes them feel comfortable. Others, who actually use their brains and believe what their eyes and ears tell them, will say things like, "Well, yeah Science tells us that the Earth is billions of years old, and I believe science, so that means that the 7 day stuff in Genesis was really metaphorical and each day really represents eons." And again their belief system is preserved and so on. The same sort of ad hoc rationalization gymnastics happens in the religious body in response to any scientific theory that puts a question mark on any aspect of the religious belief system. Evolution, for instance. "It's just a theory! There are flaws in the fossil record!" or "Evolution is really interesting, and probably happened, and the Adam and Eve story is just an Allegory for..." Notice that religious people don't go around criticizing quantum mechanics or relativity for being "just theories", because these "theories" don't directly (at least to the limited capacity of the religious layman's ability to understand them) come into conflict with their beliefs. A theory is "only just a theory" when it applies to the Big Bang, or Plate Tectonics, or any other "Just a Theory" that causes perceived friction with a religious belief system. Furthermore, the whole ad hoc way that new scientific knowledge is integrated into old belief systems, while better than nothing, is sort of silly if you ask me - if you have to modify your beliefs every time a new observation is made, how much value do your beliefs really have?
The whole point to this is that religion (again, referring to physical beliefs of who, what, where, when) ONLY "grows" or "changes" or "improves" in response to a threat to its integrity. There is no intrinsic, natural drive for change in religious thought independent of empirical science. Without scientists (by which I mean, empirical observation), all Christians would still be quite content believing that the Earth was only 5000 years old and that man was created from dirt and women created from a rib, the exact same beliefs they've had for thousands of years. Without archaeologists, no religious person would ever have thought to question whether the shroud of turin was actually the shroud on Jesus after he was buried. The difference between science and religion in their susceptibility to change (finally) is that whereas religion requires science (empiricism) as a stimulus for (however unwanted) motion, science has a natural force, a natural drive to continue evaluating what it knows and what it understands. Science doesn't just sit around, happy in the belief it has everything right, and respond only when something comes along to challenge it, striving only to maintain some delicate psychological status quo. Science also has no natural fear of what its destination may be. It is uncolored by human insecurity. It has no natural bias.
So you see there's quite a difference between the religious person modifying his beliefs in response to an empirical finding and a scientist modifying his knowledge of reality in response to an experimental result. The motion of religious belief is motivated purely by external stimuli; the motion of scientific thought is intrinstic to the discipline. The DIRECTION of motion of religious belief is biased by human desire. The DIRECTION of motion of scientific thought is not.
Two caveats to this argument:
(1) Do not take my meaning to imply that I feel that science is perfect and not prone to error. Far from it - but only because those who engage in it are imperfect and prone to error. Because science is perpetually in motion, however, erroneous findings are always - eventually - uncovered.
(2) I stress again that I'm referring to physical religious thought. I'm not sure how to better explain that except that I refer to religious beliefs about physical phenomena. There IS a something of a natural degree of motion to religious thought as it pertains to codes of morals/ethics, pure philosophy, and the like. However again I stress that such change in the religious community is also often accompanied by violence because even here there is often a large energy of activation for change even in these matters. Which is why in religion you see sects and splinters and divisions. In science, unity and peaceful consensus is always (so far, anyway) eventually attained.
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Evolution may be wrong. Just like any scientific theory (call it what you will, lets not argue semantics over the word theory), what is absolute today might not be absolute tommorrow. Like flight. Experiments were done, they failed, so it was "Scientifically impossible for man to fly with or without aid."
Well, I take that back. I might nitpick at a few other individual comments.
The "semantics" of the word theory is important, because it's a word that's thrown around a lot by nonscientists in a perjorative way when they clearly don't really understand what it means. I won't get into it here because you're unlikely to listen anyway, but I just want to point out that your analogy is not a good one.
First, aspects of evolution may be ultimately incorrect, but the theory itself is not incorrect. Given the volume of data - in many different disciplines and systems - in support of the theory, it is almost an statistical impossibility that every such piece of data will ultimately be shown to have an alternate explanation. Furthermore, it is unproductive to say something as trite as "It's only a theory, it may someday be wrong!" before an alternate theory is proposed. There *IS* no alternate theory to Evolution. THe problem is that laymen treat theories as if they are simple, one line sentences that can easily be wrong or right, but modern scientific theories are extremely complex, multifaceted entities that are the products of decades - often more - of work by hundreds and thousands of independent scientists using well-controlled, peer-reviewed experiments. Saying something like "evolution may be incorrect" is about as absurd as saying "chemistry is incorrect". Also, scientific theories are not islands. They do not exist completely separated from other theories and disciplines because often research in one area impacts another. If the theory of evolution is incorrect, likely so are large sections of genetics, molecular biology, biochemistry, ecology, medicine, and etc., and etc. In fact, aspects of evolutionary theory have also been applied to human sociology and other surprising disciplines. So sure, evolution may be incorrect - it's possible - but if it WAS shown to be incorrect, the amount of related scientific knowledge and portions of other disciplines that would also need to be discarded or very heavily modified would be downright ridiculous. It'd be sort of like saying that it's possible England doesn't and never did exist. Aside from all the evidence we have that England does and did exist, if it DID so happen that we could prove England never existed, you'd have to throw out everything you know not only about English history, but also a large chunk of what you think about American History, French History, Indian History, German History, Irish History, Spanish History, Scottish History, etc., etc. Before you know it, you realize that just by throwing out England, you don't know anything about history at all! Saying evolution might be incorrect makes about as much practical sense as saying England might be a fallacy.
Second, you flight analogy is just very poor. Comparing the evolution theory with a few experiments on flight shows that you don't appreciate how complex the theory is. If you want to make an analogy, you need to compare evolution theory with something equally complex. Like, say, physics.
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You say religious fanatics and evolution 'scientist' are very different. I say they are the exact same. Neither will even harbor the thought they may be wrong.
If that was true, nobody would still be researching evolution.
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Always question, never settle.
It's important to ask questions, but only if you're asking the right ones.
Quoting Titanium Alloy:
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HOWEVER, Most people, yourself included, criticise evolution without a SHRED of contradicting evidence, and more often than not no real understanding of evolution or why they have a problem with it.
Very true. Most of them know, at least on a subconscious level, why they have a problem with it (see above). But more to the point, Mytical (and others, I see it a lot) are fond of saying things like, "Well why don't scientists even consider that evolution might be wrong? Because they don't, that makes them zealots, too!"). In fact, I quoted her almost immediately above this. This is a sort of meaningless statement because it demonstrates that the person doesn't understand, or wants to ignore, how science is done. Why don't scientists consider the possibility that evolution is wrong? Why would they? Scientists don't consider the possibility of something unless there is evidence - expeirmental or theoretical - to support the possibility. There must be a reason (as opposed to religion, which requires none). If over the next year fifty papers were published that cast serious doubt on evolution, and proposed some totally new theory based on other evidence, and the papers were credible and reproducible, then scientists would consider the possibility that evolution is wrong. But scientists don't just throw out a theory because "well it might be wrong", especially if it's the only theory around town. That wouldn't be very productive. You need to have another theory to take its place. Until you have such a theory, why consider the possibility? That's how science works. For evolution to be overthrown, a whole lot of contradictory evidence would have to be accumulated (currently, there IS no evidence contradictory to evolution) AND a whole new theory would have to be proposed. I just don't see it happening.
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I've just realized how wrong religion is, by questioning authority.
Well it seems I'm sort of like you, except I just realized how wrong religion is, by simply using common sense.
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Corribus
Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
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posted October 11, 2007 09:41 PM |
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The 'You can't be right, because this or that (insert scientific principle) says you are wrong." Then it goes more into the area of 'blind faith'.
Where did I say that?
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Second there is a plausable alternate theory, if you actually believe the Christian version (which I do not).
Sorry, Creationism is not a theory.
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theory is flawed and still a work in progress).
A theory is not flawed by definition.
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God created the world in seven days. Days, not millions or billions of year. The reason there are similarities in dna or whatever is because they all did come from one source. God. Since they were from his 'imagination' some were different also. Now..during this time there were two areas on earth. Eden, and everywhere else. When he created Adam, Adam was immortal. A very long time passed, while the outside world changed and grew ect, ect. Time did not matter to Adam so he did not record it, millions or even billions of years could have passed. Then God seeing Adam was lonely created Eve. More time passed. Though it was an intimate relationship, no children came from them at this time. More time passed. In Eden nothing much changed, but in the outside world, things continued to change.
If this is a theory, then every aspect of it must be testable. Design an experiment to test any portion of it, and I will accept that it is a theory. If you cannot design an experiment, it is not a theory. If only religious people would realize this very simple fact that most kids SHOULD learn in 3rd grade, they'd see why Creationism is NOT a theory and never will be.
...edited out a bunch of stuff about Book 1 Chapter 1...
I'm familiar with the story. So what's the point of the lecture on Genesis?
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Yes, it still needs work, it is a work in progress, but it would explain things.
A random explanation is not the same thing as a theory.
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If I believed in the Christian Bible, which I do not. So though it says Adam lived X number of years, it was not till after they left Eden that the count began.
By the way, you're doing exactly what I said religious people do, in my post above, when confronted with a contradition between traditional belief and empirical data: ad hoc rationalization. A textbook example of trying to reshape Christian theology to be in agreement with science. Every culture in the history of the planet has a Creation story. Any one of them can serve as an explanation of the origin of the universe. None of them are theories, because none of them are testable, and none of them bring understanding.
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Gallow
Bad-mannered
Known Hero
Avenger
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posted October 11, 2007 11:05 PM |
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bla bla bla bla,and bla,no matter what you say about evolution or whatever i DONT believe it ,you werent living in that time,so nobody,neither the science can proof it 100%!!!!,so i wont post here anymore cos is full of darwin fanatics(and fan of apes too),and respect other forms of thinking respect this thread,cos i see saying that you wanna like others change their way of thinking,well no,this thread for me id dead,no sence at all anymore.
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