The creationist medical dilemma

Ha! The theory of ID runs into the fact of evolution!

You’re right, Trudeau isn’t that ignorant. What he’s doing is taking ID and evolution denial to its logical and absurd conclusion. Even staunch anti-evolutionists have no problem with taking antibiotics that were created to combat evolving strains of bacteria, even though they would at the same time stridently deny the facts and validity of evolution. Therefore, if IDists don’t want to be hypocrites they should stick to 19th century medicine. Trudeau is spot on with this strip.

he idea of DNA codes writing themselves by pure chance and improving more often than destabalizing is absurd.

And despite that absurdity, it is what has been observed in reality. “Absurd” does not mean “false.”

here is one way to test if punctuated equilibrium works: nuke the planet. This will both provide a catastrophe, as well as a mechanism for random mutation.

How about we just nuke creationists? It doesn’t matter how much evidence there is, or how solid it is in verifying the theory of evolution, creationists will deny it. Why not use this demonstration to good purpose? Will you volunteer? It’s for science.

And, since you don’t “believe” in evolution, you’re sure your sacrifice will disprove the theory. How can you lose?

@#5

“The idea of DNA codes writing themselves by pure chance and improving more often than destabalizing is absurd.”

Well, as of now, we don’t know exacly how life began, but I can tell you how life did not begin. The bible isn’t evidence, it’s just a story.

Evolution does not occur by pure chance. Evolution is the process random mutations being acted upon by natural selection. For example, if an organism possess an unfavorable mutation, it’s prospects of survival are lessened and the likelihood of it’s DNA being passed on are lessened as well and vice versa. The reason species don’t go extinct with all of these random mutations is because they are comparatively rare.

Oh, and could someone tell me the difference between small adaptations over a short period of time and evolving over a longer period. Didn’t think so.

Oh, the irony.

Whenever a creationist refers to monkeys it’s a given that he knows nothing about evolution. Next we’ll be hearing “it’s just a theory”.

How about actually gaining some knowledge about the things you criticize, rather than criticizing from your own absurd preconceptions?

schildan said: The idea of DNA codes writing themselves by pure chance and improving more often than destabalizing is absurd.

That does not mean some god did it.

@midiguru: “The IDiots feel justified in jumping on any hint that science is less than 100% infallible as some sort of proof that science is therefore unreliable.” – well science is less than 100% infallible by a long way the big difference being that science doesn’t claim to have all the answers whereas many religions claim that all the answers have been handily packaged into just the one book. To make it better the truth of the religious “big book of answers” is written in such a way that the truth/facts can be almost anything you feel it should be. Makes scientists look pretty bad by comparison don’t you think?

This idea that there are two kinds of evolution: micro-evolution and macro-evolution is a bunch of made up BS by creationists to explain away the evolution that is observable and suggest it has nothing to do with the development of mankind. In reality, all evolution happens on a microscopic scale.

Oh, well, that’s microevolution because they’re still bacteria!

Aargh.

“The idea of DNA codes writing themselves by pure chance and improving more often than destabalizing is absurd.”

And yet, the idea of a virgin woman giving birth to a man who can resurrect the dead (including himself, after a three day nap), restore sight to the blind, feed multitudes of people with a few loaves of bread and a couple fish… All this stuff makes complete sense.

Right.

*sigh*

Theory of evolution is not biogenesis.

Posters saying anything about the start of life here are sheep. The comic was about the theory of evolution, not biogenesis.

Many people tend to oversimplify complex topics, whether creationists or evolutionists. A good scientist should question his/her own beliefs, and should realize that any interpretation of reality is only a partial view. It’s sort of like translating from analog to digital, you can approximate, but never duplicate. Please, everyone, understand that you can never be 100% correct about anything, and remain tolerant and flexible, and even encourage other points of view. To realize you are not as enlighted as you think, you become more enlightened. Peace!!

I was under the impression that drug-resistant strains of bacteria were evidence of genetic drift, not mutation or evolution… I might be wrong, but I thought the distinction exists in whether new traits are created or whether existing traits are made more common. Just saying…

Gotta love the internet!

Harv, the bible is no ‘place for answers.’ Revealed truths, as theists like to call them, turn out to be fictions. If it is true and subject to experimentation then science will verify that it is so, and yet if a revealed truth is disproven theists will still go on teaching it because of these so-called holy books. This fixation on the mythical beliefs of one particular bronze age war god is irrational.

You will just have to accept that such irrational beliefs will invite people to be disrespectful, the same as if you spoke up about how you could fly just by flapping your arms. Unwillingness to doubt the words of a ‘holy book’, any one of them, is indeed a sign of mental weakness and irrationality.

Its astounding how ignorant you are Jay.

1. If you’re descended from Europeans, or Africans, or Native Americans, Jay, why are there still Europeans, or Africans, or Native Americans?

Here’s one way to tell the person knows zippidee-doo-dah about evolution: They claim, against all evidence and fact, that evolution claims humans are descended from monkeys. Not so. Never has been so.

2.

I was under the impression that drug-resistant strains of bacteria were evidence of genetic drift, not mutation or evolution… I might be wrong, but I thought the distinction exists in whether new traits are created or whether existing traits are made more common. Just saying…

Some drug-resistant strains may result from genetic drift — which could also result in speciation. Other drug resistance results purely from mutations driven by the drug, and selection of the resistant strains unintentionally by the drug. What it demonstrates is that natural selection works.

It also works in viruses, which most biologists will tell you are not technically alive. HIV, for example, mutates and speciates so rapidly that each human victim has her own species of the virus. That’s one of the things that has made developing treatments and vaccines so difficult. Were it true that HIV worked only on instructions from the intelligent designer, we’d have had a vaccine in 1989.

3.

In this thread it was mentioned that the Bible was a place for answers… that is because it is. Period.

Some answers. The Bible is silent about most issues dealing with biology and evolution. The Bible says nothing about the age of the Earth. The Bible is silent on internal combustion engines, rocketry, and space travel. The Bible is silent on cancer cures — but science speaks to these issues, clearly and well.

Tell you what: You don’t shut down our hospitals for using applied evolution theory to cure disease, I won’t insist your pastor pass a test on quantum theory.

4.

Isn’t it immoral (and illegal) to republish another person’s artwork? Oh, yeah. Who needs morality when there is no god? Whew… Time to to go ‘borrow’ the neighbor’s car while he’s not looking…

Maybe fair use doctrine covers it (I suspect Trudeau’s not unhappy with the free plug).

No morality? Evolution of social species such as humans requires altruism, and other forms of morality. As Darwin noted, the survival of our species depends on fitness, and ability to get along, to cooperate in enterprises larger than one person or one family, is essential to our survival. It’s a fitness test. As Darwin said, those who do not act on the principal that what is offensive to me is also offensive to others and should not be done, isn’t really going to do well in the competition for mates, and will be bred out of the human family. In other words, the Golden Rule is essential to our survival, and humans have since we hit this planet, enforced that rule in many ways. You want to borrow your neighbor’s car without her permission? Your car will be gone, too. Your choice. Meanwhile, the rest of us will be out reproducing with the mate you might have had if you weren’t so bent on wasting your time with larceny.

When biologists use the term “macro evolution,” they mean “speciation. There is no difference between “macro” and “micro” evolution, except that at some point the off-spring can’t breed back with the original stock, and we can say speciation has definitely occurred. Speciation may occur earlier, but it’s difficult to pinpoint.

Pragmatically, “macro” and “micro” evolution use the same processes exactly, and the only difference is the distance already traveled.

The Bible is good for answers on how to live your life (stay out of debt, be nice to people, stay clean, don’t eat uncooked pork) but it really doesn’t give a whole lot of input on the nature of our world. For instance, I wouldn’t ask the Bible how to create an open source OS.

Well said.

Faith is indeed a weakness, if you mean the faith in the religious sense. Faith is believing something despite the evidence, or lack thereof. Hardly something a rational person should be proud of. Not believing is also not acknowledging a higher power. Does your lack of belief in Thor prove that Thor exists? If you truly believe what you just posted, then you believe in every single god any person has ever thought up. In fact its so blatantly ridiculous that I think you should go to the person you heard it from and smack some sense into them. It is truly that stupid, and I came into this conversation expecting a fairly high level of stupidity. Anyone who believes a statement like that, one that clearly and obviously contradicts itself, is by definition insane.

Seek an education.

@Aor:

Faith being a weakness goes further than just the “it’s not good to be stupid” it by its very definition means the inability to be persuaded by arguments and evidence in way rational people can be. A simple example is the Catholic Church’s insistence that artificial contraception should not be used thereby adding to the tragedy that is HIV/AIDS in many countries. It’s plainly impossible to explain to someone that claims to be infallible* that this course of action is simply wrong.

*What a cunning plan declare that you’re infallible and so are all those after you. That should stop all that boring debate – I’m right and god says so!

@garyvdh

if this TB virus lived in the certain conditions for millions of years then it might end up resembling something completely different.

As for genetic drift and speciation, genetic drift is the result of certain phenotyipic traits being selected for by an environment. A phenotype is the result of what genes you have. For a phenotype to change genes must change too. In the case of bacteria how would the resistant phenotypes have come about? maybe through a gene mutation which turns out to be advantageous. In other words genetic drift is a step in the long process that is speciation.

For all the people that say the chance of a mutation not causing death is infinite and so that is why the theory of evolution is flawed, it is because mutations occur very rarely so deaths would be like 1 in 1000000, unexplainable miscarriages.

Macroevolution is another matter though: there is no proof and it is completely impossible.

That’s right. Broccoli doesn’t exist. It’s really cabbage shavings glued on asparagus stalks by workers in a secret factory in Kansas. No radishes. Canola is really just the poisonous rapeseed watered down.

Cows don’t exist. After the aurochs was wiped out, a secret cabal set about fattening deer way beyond obesity, and they are sold as “beef,” but no one has ever seen them actually reproducing.

Mosquitoes aren’t really resistant to DDT — Idi Amin and other African dictators read Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and dictated that DDT not be used, to save songbirds in the jungle.

Thank God there’s no macro-evolution. The Argentine Fire Ant would be able to spread across America if it could evolve.

Isn’t it funny how angry people get when you take their religious beliefs to their obvious conclusions?

What the doctor is referring to is evolution. There is no distinction between “micro” and “macro” evolution in biology, except that “macro” causes speciation, as seen usually retrospectively. Same mechanisms, same results, same everything.

The claim that there ain’t no macroevolution is the doctor’s patient in deep denial that nature runs the way God wants it to run, and not the way creationists want it to run.

“How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, ‘This is better than we thought! The universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater than we dreamed.’ Instead they say, ‘No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.’”

-Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision Of The Human Future In Space

Inanimate molecules joining together over millions of years to form living animals? nonsense!
A giant man with a white beard appearing out of nowhere, taking a bit of mud and magically giving it life and calling it man? Completely logic!

“If a man begin with certainties,
He shall end in doubts;
But if he will be content to begin with doubts,
He shall end in certainties.”

Francis Bacon

@Will

Each human germ-line cell (sex cell) possesses on average 300 mutations. This is well known. To see it you simply have to sequence your genome, and that of your parents, and look. That’s 300 mutations for you. 300 for me, probably different.

A good source of this information can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation_rate

We have some 3 million base pairs. That’s a lot of digital space for errors to crop up in. You have many mutations in you. As do I. And they are different. In hindsight, maybe 10,000 years from now, somebody will look back and see whose family line had more children, and his mutations would seem to be beneficial.

@Rabbi Y
“Trudeau is Jewish. Why can’t they attack their own religion?”

… so in what way is creationism not part of Judaism?

The “unreasonableness” of faith has emerged out from religious doctrines that were concocted solely from a literal/sensual interpretation of the Holy Word.

Scripture is a multidimensional document – in the same way that the universe is hierarchically ordered and stacked. That is why everything in the universe has derived its patterning principles from the Word of God.

Spiritually yours,
TheGodGuy

Good cartoon! Would a creationist take a pill with chemotherapeutics (*) to cure him from cancer? If he doesn’t want to be a hypocrite, he shouldn’t. So let’s hope!

* chemotherapeutics are found through scientific methods, the same method that demonstrates that/how evolution works.

The problem is the mechanism (punctuated equilibrium) by which this “good” mutation becomes part of the entire species.

According to this theory (punctuated equilibtium) almost an entire species has to get wiped out in order for a SINGLE new “good” mutation to have an effect.

I think there is some confusion about what punctuated equilibria means. It’s not a mechanism of evolution. It’s a description of the lifetimes of species and their shift to new species, particularly as snapshotted in fossils.

Punctuated equilibria does not preclude genetic drift, nor does it preclude evolution by slower, steady change means. Punc Eq is no problem to good mutations; most readings of the idea would see that it presents a way by which a suddenly benefitical mutation can quickly spread throughout a population (and remember, evolution happens to populations, not to individuals).

There is nothing in any incarnation of punctuated equilibria that suggests a species needs to get wiped out for evolution to proceed.

See the Wikipedia entry on “punctuated equilibria,” and see the TalkOrigins entry:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/punc-eq.html#summary

Let me sum it up this way: evolutionary theory teaches that biological diversity is a result of intensive inbreeding.

Evolution depends on variation. Natural selection needs variation to work on. Inbreeding results in less variation — that’s exactly the problem that faces cheetahs, now.

Evolution theory doesn’t “teach” that diversity is a result of inbreeding. That’s not something you could learn in any real evolution course.

The “unreasonableness” of faith stems from the simple fact that faith itself is a denial of reason.

Scripture, when looked at from a rational point of view, is nothing more than one particular version of the mythology of one particular bronze age war god. Finding interesting or useful philosophical or moral teachings in any scripture implies nothing about the validity of the supernatural bigotry that fills the majority of the rest of the pages.

In other words, a reasonable (and reasoned) person can find useful teachings in any scripture, or any book, fiction or non-fiction or even the crazy ramblings of a serial killer. If those crazy ramblings go on long enough they are bound to contain a few interesting philosophical gems. Do rare gems of ‘truth’ imply the whole crazy rant is true? Hardly.

No reasonable person can claim to believe the supernatural, and gods are supernatural creatures. Leave magical thinking behind, it leads nowhere.

Brilliant. Not only does it lampoon the hypocrisy of the silly superstitious types we call “creationists” and their denial of evolution “it’s just a theory,” it also paints man as the “Intelligent Designer” or, god was made in man’s image as opposed to the opposite claim adhered to by the same superstitious folk.

MY problem with this whole debate is the utter ugliness that most atheists employ when attacking creationists (and in some cases, vice-versa).

I believe in God, but the belief that God made everything that currently exists here on Earth in its current state is just silly.

There is room in this world for people of faith who also happen to believe science… but sadly many who post on the web don’t see it that way. It’s either “my way or the highway.”

Time for myopic people on BOTH sides of this argument to evolve…

Torg said:

And, of course, most Creationists believe (not without some basis) that God frowns on incest. Which begs the question, why would he leave Adam and Eve’s children no other choice?

Additionally, there are three “races” of human in modern times: Mongoloid, Caucasoid, and Negroid. Adam and Eve’s children would have all been the same race. Two of those races must have evolved afterward.

Creationists, dispute that.

First off I am not a bible banger, but I have read the bible front to back …. Torg needs to read it as Adam and Eve WERE NOT the first people on the planet– they were the first CHOOSEN people (jews) There were already many other people on the planet as it states that .. beasts were laid around the garden to keep others out…Cain was banished from the garden and lived in (forget the city name) and married a gential..ect ect so please, before you comment on things please know wtf your talking about…..now obviously ‘churches’ and priest and pasters always teach that Adam and Eve were the first yada yada.. those fuckers need to go read it as well instead of just going along with what thier churches say…as with anything in life DO NOT TAKE anouther persons word for anything … read the material and it learn from it. Now some other retard will come along and say stuff about my grammer and blaaa blaaa…. go back to teaching your English class i don’t have time to proof everything I write………..

Truthilicious, the nature of science and the nature of faith will always be at odds. Those who believe in both are compartmentalizing. Faith implies that there are some topics that cannot be questioned under any conditions.. that concept is anathema to science. It is simply not rational to believe in nature following scientific laws, except in those cases when supernatural powers want to break those laws. I realize that many do believe in exactly that, but those people are taking the position of ‘the universe is natural, except when its not’ which destroys the value of their faith, and the value of any conclusions they may reach rationally. If you want to see that as ‘my way’ vs ‘the highway’ then you are essentially implying that complete and utter tolerance of any belief system is the only acceptable way, no matter how disgusting and vile any given one of those beliefs may be.

Rational people take their beliefs and analyze them, rationally. Any belief that you refuse (or are not allowed) to analyze in this way is something that should raise a red flag in your mind. Nothing can be above question, therefore you must question any and all religious beliefs and prove them true or false, which removes faith from the equation and that leaves you with reason and only reason to rely on.

It really is all or nothing. The universe follows natural laws that we can do experiments to determine, or it follows supernatural laws that cannot be tested in any way. Believing in both is not something to be proud of, or tolerant of, or to politely ignore. We either stand up for rational thought, or let each and every crazy belief system go unchallenged in all situations. Since I doubt you want to have people preach to you unchallenged that we should all save the corpses of our dead ancestors under our beds and use their ground up bones to make a nice soup on our wedding night, you will have to accept that your religion will have to be subject to those same challenges as any other.

It really is the battle between rational and irrational. Being on both sides of the battle isn’t something to be proud of.

My apologies for skipping the discussion. My comments are directed a the OP:

Nonsense. Creationists don’t disbelieve mutations, speciations or any of that stuff. It’s a straw man. Of course the bacteria can have ‘evolved’ to be resistant to antibiotics. DUH. The ones that weren’t resistant got killed, so what do you have left, the ones that are resistant. Survival of the fittest, not a bad idea by Charles Darwin. It explains how Noah could have gotten “all those animals” on the ark. He only had 2 dogs, and their offspring spread out all over the world. The ones in Alaska survived if they had long hair. They became wolves. The ones in Africa survived if they had short hair. They became African wild dogs.

This does not contradict a 6-day literal interpretation of Genesis 1, because God could still have created the world in 6 literal days, creating man, animals, etc, and this still be true. This doesn’t imply evolution of apes into man.

WHY does it not imply evolution of apes into man? It’s pretty simple. You’re equating two things that are not equal. In order to make that link you have to say that members of a species dying who possessed certain genes other than the ones that would allow them to survive (genes that are now lost to the gene pool) is the same as a fish (going back a little further in the gene pool) suddenly sprouting legs. They’re not the same

I’ll tell you why they’re not the same. When you have speciation, and survival of the fittest happening, you lose genetic information. You do not gain genetic information. The microbes of TB that are now resistant to the antibiotics didn’t become resistant. They’ve been resistant all along! The TB population was just relieved of the weakling ones that weren’t, so by percentage the amount of ones that were resistant grew to appear that there are more of them.

Is there a severely recessive fish gene out there that can cause a fish to be born with legs? I haven’t heard of one. Is there evidence that there was ever a time in which it became necessary to survival for fish to have legs? I’ve not heard of it. For all I know there is no genetic code in fish to grow legs, and there was never an environment that killed the ones with them. So where did the fish that first evolved into amphibians get that information? It couldn’t have come from outside them. There has never been positive observation of that kind of thing happening outside of deliberate human intervention.

For that matter, you have a major hurdle to jump when you consider the fact that there are differing numbers of chromosomes between species even of the same genus. Therefore, if they’re going to evolve into each other, they have to change their number of chromosomes. That never happens in survival of the fittest or in speciation. Sure, sometimes an abnormal case can happen when a foetus doesn’t develop correctly, but those are generally deleterious traits.

A fish isn’t going to suddenly, for no other reason than it saw land, grow legs with no genetic code for it. Study all of Darwin’s research, you’ll see this. It’s only a matter of observing deletion, not insertion.

Fish don’t turn into amphibians. Dinosaurs don’t turn into birds. Cats don’t turn into dogs. And apes don’t turn into men. At least, it’s not proved by TB becoming antibiotic resistant.

And Darwin himself laughed at the illogical leap people made between his theories and the evolution of man from apes.

Unreasonable faith, or good science? You tell me. As far as I see it, evolution is as provable as creation, as it requires the same amount of faith to believe both, and the same amount of assuming what you’re trying to prove to argue for both. They are equally plausible from an objective perspective.

It is very hard for me to understand the logic that people have on these message boards, not for the validity of their argument but that their argument matters at all. Of course, I’m posting too, so shame on me.

I am a Christian, so therefore, I am both brain dead and weak. I assume that some great eternal being snapped his fingers and made the world, the universe, and the ability to have the creationist/evolutionist debate continue in sound waves forever by giving all of us blowhards vocal chords.

I have continually researched the prospect of evolution and creationism, heard propagandist lectures of scientists on both sides, and I have been enrolled in both public and private schools. After 18 plus years of education I have sadly decided I don’t care anymore.

God, in all his infinite wisdom could have used evolution. I highly doubt it. But he could have.

Yes, I believe in God. I can’t write a systematic equation on his existence, so he must be unbelievable. If I have heard his voice, or seen a sunset, or had him manifest himself in a diner to me while I eat Denny’s pancakes, it wouldn’t matter to anyone who does not believe in him because it would only hold water to myself.

And that is the issue. We have become so indoctrinated with our own lines of rhetoric that we fail to be decent humans towards each other or respect the viewpoints we have because Damn it! You are wrong and I’m right!

So one Christian will be on record saying the shouting matches really don’t matter. I encourage the atheists to disprove God, but you really won’t be able to, at least for me. And I doubt I can argue you all into submission. Instead, I will value those around me more than I value myself, and if we ever meet in person, the first round of intelligently designed beer is on me.

At the end of our lives one idea will be true. Sure. But I have nothing to lose and everything to gain and atheists have nothing to gain but everything to lose. No offense.

My comment above was to Jabsters comment, hopefully you all understood that.

=)

Drew,

If god isn’t real, then haven’t you wasted time and effort and indeed your only life believing in god? Also, is your god so petty that only people who worship him in a complete void of evidence of his existence are considered good by him? No offense taken.

@16: “This idea that there are two kinds of evolution: micro-evolution and macro-evolution is a bunch of made up BS by creationists…”

Excuse me? Allow me to quote, all the way from 1937, from Theodosius Dobzhansky, in “Genetics and the Origin of Species”:

“[T]here is no way toward an understanding of the mechanisms of macroevolutionary changes, which require time on a geological scale, other than through a full comprehension of the microevolutionary processes observable within the span of a human lifetime…For this reason we are compelled at the present level of knowledge reluctantly to put a sign of equality between the mechanisms of macro- and microevolution, and proceeding on this assumption, to push our investigations as far ahead as this working hypothesis will permit.”

if intelligent design really existed why the hell did god creat pedofiles then

All religious faith is blind faith. If it had support, meaning evidence, it would not be faith. Lacking evidence, it is blind.

Simple, no?

Tolerance isn’t all its cracked up to be either. Would you tolerate a religion that tortured animals or supported criminal behavior? You see, it doesn’t make sense to tolerate those things simply because they are attached to a religion.. each behavior gets judged and tolerated or not on its own merits. As believers began to realize that stoning people wasn’t tolerated by those around them, they adjusted their beliefs to drop the stonings. Similarly for slavery and eventually for not treating women like human beings. Should they have been tolerated, should they be tolerated still, when followers of a religion advocate ideas that are flat out unacceptable?

In other words, beliefs do not automatically require that everyone around tolerate them simply because they are part of any given faith. Respect is another similar issue. One does not respect an adult who still believes in Santa Clause, and similarly one should not respect an adult who believes in supernatural powers and invisible men in the sky.

Tolerate everyones religious beliefs, no matter what they are.. no matter how disgusting, illegal, immoral, unethical, violent or abusive.
Look at that sentence, and understand it well. The errors of that kind of thinking are clear.

@james tobin: You aren’t helping. That argument is as stupid as “If we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?”

@Aor: Unthinking intolerance is at least as bad as unconditional tolerance. What have Buddhists done that is disgusting, illegal, immoral, unethical, violent or abusive? How about modern Christians? You apparently believe everyone religious is evil and/or stupid because those kinds of nuts are the most vocal.

#96:

“What have Buddhists done that is disgusting, illegal, immoral, unethical, violent or abusive?” Look up Buddhist nationalism in Sri Lanka.

@Torg

Luckily I’m not arguing in favor of unthinking intolerance. My point is that the ‘tolerate my beliefs no matter what’ is an utterly ridiculous position. Unthinking intolerance would be the extremes of racism, sexism, bigotry, hatred of yourself and of everyone and everything around you. Inability to tolerate spoons and ice cream, for example. Its too blatantly ridiculous to ever actually occur, in other words.

I don’t care about how vocal any given theist is. I just want to see all people be willing and able to justify their beliefs in a rational manner, or admit publicly that they cannot do so and go on with their lives. The only suitable method is to openly discuss all such beliefs and use reason to evaluate them. People who cannot defend their religion may just learn that their religion is indefensible.

@A.J.: It takes millions of years for evolution like that to occur. We haven’t been watching long enough to see any single-celled organisms evolve into multicellular organisms.

@103: Care to clarify, or are you going to leave us wondering what, exactly, is too simplistic?

[Admin: I deleted 103 because he wasn't adding anything to the discussion. Comic strips are always simplistic.]

This discussion can carry on till eternity.

@AJ: “Good job at misunderstanding the Christian faith. No one denies micro-evolution like this comic is talking about.”

Ahem. Good job at misunderstanding comics. Noone denies that comics are somewhat inaccurate caricatures of reality.

the cartoon was stupid and ill conceived,…it would seem nothing more than those with ego’s that like to pat their own intelligence…trying to be funny…but failing and while doing so showing they really don’t know what they are talking about…defeating their own misguided belief, that they were being intelligent when they wrote it…

I’m a creationist, but I still believe strongly in science. And I’m not talking about the science that believe in but you don’t. The thing is, I see plenty of evidence for a Creator. While there is plenty of evidence for evolution, it is always the loss of something. I personally don’t know of any examples in the fossil record of an animal growing an appendage.

I understand that you think most Christians are ignorant…Well, your probably right, but there are a few who see evidence for what we believe.

@ AJ: “but there are a few [christians] who see evidence for what we believe”: of course AJ, that is why it is called ‘belief’! The translation of ’science’ in German and Dutch is ‘Wissenschaften’ and ‘wetenschappen’. ‘Wissen’ and ‘weten’ means ‘knowing’! Luckily the words ‘belief’ and ’science’ seperate clearly the two different groups.

What’s important is that there’s better medicine now than there used to be. How it got to be better and the rest is for discussion by those who claim to have a corner on … er … truth.

That evolution makes more sense to me is of minor importance. Someone wants to believe something else is of little significance to me. Someone who wants to shove their beliefs down my throat has my intense attention.

You don’t see single celled creatures growing into multi-celled organisms.

All the time. Every human starts with one cell, you know. Do you know much about human development?

@Jabster

Excellent points.

1. “If you want to supply some evidence that the FSM is any more or less a crack pot idea than “God” then I think you should post them. There is no reason believe that if there was a creator that he/she/it would not be some weird and wacky entity.”

You are absolutely right. There is no more evidence supporting “God” (none) than there is supporting FSM (also none). The point here is that when there is no evidence at all, all theories are equally valid/invalid according to logic.

2. “The idea of god for something that we don’t understand has been proved again and again to be the limitation of our knowledge.Why do you suppose that in the future this will change. Your explanation that if we don’t understand something then you can reasonable assume that god can be put in its place is frankly daft. Would you agree that I can rightly claim that Thor, Zeus etc. could also be put in its place?”

Yes, I would agree that you can put anything you wish in its place including Thor and/or Zeus until such a time comes that Thor, Zeus, God, or Science is capable of providing some kind of evidence to support itself.

@Circumspect

“It also irks me when people assume that the evolutionary theory came out of science (was deduced from research, etc) and that the creation theory came from old religious ideas and tries to fit itself into scientific facts. This is of course ridiculous.”

I’m assuming that by calling these statements ridiculous, you are also claiming that they’re false. However, as I can’t imagine where else evolution theory came from besides science, someone will have to enlighten me before I can consider it ridiculous. Similarly, If creation theory did not come from “old religious ideas” where did it come from?

I grew up in India, and the point of religion and science crossing never came up.

On the religion side, we always believed God created man. On the science side, that man evolved.

For some reason, these two spheres were kept non-interfering. Like, religion was a way to pray, to believe in yourself, gain inner strength, to believe there is always a higher power watching over you. Science was a way to learn, to build, and to dream.

They went hand in hand. A favorite prayer was “i pray thee to grant me the ability to not forget anything I ever learned”

To me, religion is my personal depression hotline (and much much more) and I will not let it interfere with science. You can tell me it is false, and it might be, but it has its use for me.

amazing thread. I didn’t read the whole thing, but I wanted to comment on one of the earlier posts by schildan who said that “The idea of DNA codes writing themselves by pure chance and improving more often than destabalizing is absurd.”

A decent understanding of evolution will reveal that in fact random genetic mutations are usually detrimental. The way evolution works is that these BAD changes result in failure to reproduce successfully or effectively and GOOD changes (which do occur FAR less often) result in successful and effective reproduction. Over the course of ABSURD time periods (billions of years) these ‘extremely rare’ good mutations become ubiquitous and a pattern of increasing complexity in organisms emerges on the absurd timescale of billions of years.

For bacteria, the timescale isn’t as long because the number of bacteria is so large. A few rare good mutations occur frequently because there are unimaginably large numbers of bacteria and the same evolutionary patterns emerge.

@studymuch?

“In conclusion to my essay length response, I would just like to say that there is no reason to call other people ignorant for their beliefs, especially the atheists as a) it doesn’t make your theory any more correct; and b) your arguments are just as flawed, wide acceptance of a theory does not make it true. So next time, try a little bit harder to find a clean, logical argument”

Well a) is true but b) is just rubbish. Please post a “logical argument” for example the Earth was created 6,000 thousand years ago and was populated by God and compare that to a logical argument for evolution.

I do understand what you are saying but unfortunately you whole reasoning is flawed. Science aims to answers questions and then refine those answers in light on new evidence – religion on the other hand claims to have all the answers in spite of evidence that contradicts it. In conclusion to claim that believing in religion is somehow on a par with “believing” in science is just plain daft.

@Studymuch?

I couldn’t help but notice that during your whole essay, whose main point was as far as I could tell ’science is fallible’, you barely mentioned the creationist end of it at all. The only times you allude to creationism is when you compare it to evolution here

“NO ONE EVER has found an infallible reason to believe in science. We just do. I would also like to point out that this is a very similar argument for religion. People don’t have a logical argument for believing in religion, or at least they don’t have arguments that don’t contain flaws.”

You are right in saying that there are flaws in the arguments for both religion and science. However you are completely wrong in claiming (which I think you do, correct me if I’m wrong) that this gives them equal claim to validity. I can’t imagine how that claim could hold any philosophical water but I’ve been wrong before. If you have some philosophy behind this claim, by all means post it.

The way I see it, and I made a post along these lines already, theories have equal claims to validity when the evidence supporting them is equal. In addition, because ‘evidence’ is not exactly a qualitative measurement and difficult to objectively ascribe equality to, the only time theories can truly be considered equally valid is when there is absolutely no evidence for any theory at all. Not a very likely phenomenon I would imagine and thus not practically very useful, but it seems philosophically sound to me.

On a side note, you briefly compared science and philosophy. The trouble is that philosophy and science have completely different aims. Science attempts to predict what will happen or deduce why something already happened. Philosophy aims at proving something true/false beyond a shadow of a doubt using logic, not data. Science uses logic too, obviously, but science’s logic tries to discover what is most likely, as opposed to philosophy which proves what is infallibly (according to logic) right. This is the reason there are a lot more scientific laws than there are philosophical ones. Science is much more malleable, and much less precise.

I have until now never seen the point in entering a debate like this. I am doing now just to register my disgust with the brow-beating dogmatic rhetoric being spewed in the name of both science and religion.

What astonishes me the most is the arrogance and the patronising attitude of many on the atheist side of the debate. The most recent incarnation of this debate was started quite cynically as a political action by the Intelligent Design people and for reasons that escape me the “rationalists” react in a kneejerk defensive way, spending as little energy on attempting to understand the idea and point of religion as possible.

Science is just another way of attempting to understand the world that we perceive. It is very effective in many ways, but it is not the be all and end all of knowledge. There are a number of unjustified assumptions at the base of science, just like there are at the base of any system of knowledge, particularly one which attempts to use logic to reason about things.

Religion is by its nature unfalsifiable. But so are Occam’s Razor, first order predicate logic, morality, and whether red or green is my favourite colour. Mathematics is unfalsifiable, but this does not make it nonsense, clearly.

I don’t really think there is any point in writing anything further, since both sides of this debate seem perfectly happy to shout at one another without listening to, or attempting to understand, the other side’s position so why would they want to take any notice of me. I in fact believe that life did evolve by means of natural selection and was not created by any deity, but I do not believe that I would have any justification in condemning religion as a result.

Insisting on fairness and equality is not arrogance. What is the point of understanding any particular religion when ALL religions are logically invalid? Thats like suggesting people need to understand the Green Lantern in order to have an opinion on superheroes and the lack thereof. It really is that simple.. fictions do not need to be understood in order to be called fictions. Would the point of any particular religion alter the inherent flaws magical thinking? It is clearly irrelevant what the point of any magical thinking is.. I do not need to know why the Carthaginians sacrificed babies, I only need to know that it was ridiculous supernatural claptrap.

Science is not ‘just another way of attempting to understand the world’.. it is the ONLY way.

Darwinian Evolution says nothing of life forming from nothing. All it says is that lifeforms slowly change and develop.

@ Seito, yes of course you are right. Just because two claims both contain flaws, does not make them equally valid. I was trying to say that scientific process is not sound and the belief system behind science and religion is (at least on some level) similar. Currently it seems that sciencs works by a mechanism that if a theory has not been proven wrong, it is probably right. If someone wants to believe that something occurred because God did it you should just let them. There is, after all, no way of actually proving to them that it happened because of gravity or something. They will simply say that God made gravity or whatever. It’s like a neverending loop, and if you are not directly affected by it, why complain? If creationism isn’t taught at your school or the school of your children, what’s the problem?

And yes, philosophy and science do not mix well but the question of ethics and indeed the reasoning behind science is constantly being questioned. The philosophical theories I was providing are directly aimed at science, there are sections at universities (at least where I am) that are dedicated solely to how philosophy relates to science, as abstract as that sounds. I don’t think I even responded to what Seito said but anyway…

I’m not really out to change anyone’s mind about this subject, but as I feel I enjoy the best of both world’s (science and religion) I feel like people should not try to justify their arguments by saying that ’science’ is the only way when it is not 100% precise. And @ Jabster, I would also like to add, I was never supporting creationism, there’s just something very awkward about that theory… I just wanted to make people open their minds before they opened their mouths. And I pretty much agree with what Grodin said.

@Aor:

“Science is not ‘just another way of attempting to understand the world’.. it is the ONLY way.”

I suppose being picky I would say science as we define it is the best way that we currently have and I think it would be presumptuous to say that humanity won’t come up with a better method in the future. That’s the beauty of science it redefines itself in the light of new evidence even if the idea of scientists being open minded to new ideas is not as true many people would like to believe. Comparing this to religion shows a stark contrast – we have all the answers and they are written in this book.

Religious faith is not the same as trust. We don’t have faith that the universe will cease to exist in 5 seconds. It takes a big-F Faith to believe in that. So actually, in that respect, religion and science are not similar at all. There is a temptation to blur that word, to imply a person means religious faith when he does not and vice versa. Its best to keep the concept of big-F Faith very separate from having faith that your babysitter will arrive on time because she always has before. Evidence based on one hand, eternally baseless on the other.

haha @ seito:

it’s the typical, “science has taken us for a ride, and science is a faith as well… they might be taking the piss…”

haha. read more science, more science of history, more epistemology and its history, and quit being the coward that thinks that everyone since Copernicus, Galileo, Huxley, Darwin, Frick, and Dawkins are out to make fools out of everyone.

READ MY WORDS: READ!

This comic makes a powerful statement… I loved it!
And the debate that followed… Also loved it!

…I’ve noticed a lot of so-called “Intelligently designed” things sure have a lot of flaws!… So much for a perfect creator.

As for evolution… I can’t wait for universal remotes to evolve into smaller, simpler, more user-friendly devices… *sigh*

“And why is it more upsetting to you than the idea that we are all here with absolutely no purpose other than the evolution that randomly produced us?”
Evolution isn’t random; it selects the best products.

“I see so many logical flaws in the thinking of those who claim to be the “rational” ones that I won’t even bother going into the arguments with them because they wouldn’t be able to see or understand it because they choose not to”
I try to be fair minded. Show me the flaws in the theory that more fit individuals are more likely to survive than less fit individuals.

“which has always and will always be just a theory”
A theory in the scientific sense is something that adequately explains occurrences based on prior observations and logic. Evolution is a theory in the same way that gravity is a theory. “Just a theory” does not apply in science.

Creation is the eternal event, Evolution is Creations’ temporal profile. seems pretty straight forward to me.

I haven’t read all the posts, so forgive me if this has been brought up, but from what I can gather from the first 15 or so, it seems that a lot of people don’t get the difference between microevolution and macroevolution. There is plenty of evidence for microevolution, such as mutations, and different breeds of animals and such, but I’ve never seen anything really convincing to make me think macroevolution is plausible. For it’s time, it was a great theory, but if macroevolution were really possible, why wouldn’t we be able to mix breed species for more than one generation? That’s a legitimate question, not a rhetorical one. I’m not claiming to be an expert, but the evidence that one species could turn into an entirely different species over the course of however many generations sounds like a bit of a stretch. Now as far as creation goes, I believe that creationists who claim to not believe in the big bang are closed minded. If anything, Big Bang theory corroborates with creationism more than evolution. There was nothing, then existence suddenly leapt into . . . well, existence. Anyways, I could go a bit deeper, but I’m running out of time, and if anyone could direct me to the answers, if any, to my questions, I’d appreciate it. Also, I’d like to make it known that I’m a Christian, but I consider myself open minded. I came to the conclusion that creationism was true based on objective observation and logic, though it’s obvious that two people can look at the same thing and come away with entirely different ideas. I’m not dissing, and although my faith is pretty solid, I still consider myself a bit of an agnostic, because despite my experiences, I’m not 100% sure, and I don’t think anyone but the most hardheaded on either side of the coin can say they are.

There is no significant difference between micro and macro evolution.. if anything it is only one of duration. That is a falsehood that is spread by creationists. Please, get your information on evolution from a neutral source and not a preacher. The answers are out there, and even in used biology textbooks you can find for cheap if you are interested in the truth instead of falling for theistic propaganda.

Countless articles are published in peer reviewed biology journals every year. The information is free for the asking for anyone interested in the facts rather than fiction.

As for multiple generations of cross-species breedings.. use google. Search for mules giving birth. It happens, its rare, but undeniable.

Also, if you have logic to defend creationism you should present it. You could probably get a lot of money from the Discovery Institute and maybe even win the nobel prize.

So who’s to say that “God” didn’t include evolution into the plan. Perhaps it’s all tied in together. I know that’s similar to what the Gnostic Christians suggest.

If you had proof that love didn’t exist would you stop feeling it? Regardless of the theology involved, I believe in what I feel.

This whole argument always reminds me of something I read once…In the begining there was nothing, and it exploded. If nothing else the whole thing gives all the errogant academics from both sides something to waste time with.

Who cares how we got here? We’re here! make the most of it. Life is short, and there are much better things to do with it than try to convince the other guy he’s wrong.

I guess I am a little lost…I just wanna know how everything got going in the first place; big bang, evolution, or whatever. Something had to exist before it could explode or evolve, right? What was it? How did it get there?

The interesting thing to me is that this debate has turned into one of science vs. religion – but hello – has anyone even noticed that the creationists or the IDists are simply proposing a different theory about the development of the earth? They are not talking about religion but about scientific theories that demonstrate a different conclusion to the observable data – it just so happens that they begin with God as the starting point.

I don’t hear them talking about “religion” which happens to be VERY different than simply acknowledging that an intelligent being may have created something – religion is full of rules and regulations etc…which are man made efforts to try and worship/follow a certain being…so lets at least argue the same points….

Science and faith are two different issues and you can’t debate them against each other because its not in the same playing field. If you want to discredit the creationists or ID’ists at least know what they are talking about and not talking about and debate on those specific issues – have any of you who swear by evolution ever even read through some of the scientific evidence and theories that they put forth? (i’m not just talking about the overall theory that God created the earth etc…but specifics of specific events, natural laws as a result, etc…)

have any of you read through some of the really technical scientific documents for the tectonic plates shifting or the separating of the continents as a result of a giant worldwide flood or the effect of a pre-flood higher oxygen level on the ability of dinosours to survive on dense vegetation and with such tiny nostrils(which would by the way make it impossible for them to have existed in our atmosphere as it is now, or even as evolutionists propose that it was – much higher in other gases – not oxygen)?

Have any of you considered how the coal and oil deposits manage to be so vast across the world? These would be impossible without a major catastrophic flood compressing the vegetation (which would have been incredibly dense given the preflood conditions of higher oxygen levels, canopy layer of water and higher humidity)

Have any of you even heard of the fact that the moon has been slowly moving away from the earth (and that the earth is moving farther from the sun) and that given the calculations by even scientists who believe in evolution and a REALLY old earth that it would have meant the moon/ sun was pretty much directly in the earth (not possible) only a few million/ years ago – which totally blows the theory of an older earth, and billions of years of evolution as it would not be possible given the calculations of where it should be now or was then…

or the fact that given the millions of years that evolutionists claim have passed since the evolution of man there should be mountains and mountains of fossils all around the earth given the calculations (even very very very conservative calculations) of the reproduction rate of the humans in order to arrive at the population today. Even figuring in a number of potential catastrophic events in order to eliminate a few million here and there there is no way to account for why there are no bones…except for the fact that maybe people haven’t actually been around that long and the bones haven’t been able to pile up? Of course there will be tons in the oil deposits, but that still doesnt account for them all…so where are all the fossils of the transitional humans or the transitional apes for that matter.

Also, who in their right mind would believe that it is possible for evolution to evolve apes into humans but still have apes around today? For that matter any other species from which we were supposed to have evolved from. If the theory of evolution were really correct then they should have all died out becuase the transitional forms would have been “weaker” and less evolved and only the strong ones that had mutated the extra bits to survive through the supposedly really really long periods when those survival things would have been necessary would have made it – so why are these creatures still here then and how did they manage to “survive” all the changes that would have made it necessary for the “stronger” ones to have mutated etc…

People always ask the question – who did Cain marry if the bible is really true or stuff like that (by the way he could have easily married his sister or another relative becuase there would have been plenty of time for his parents to have other kids etc.) but hello…has anyone even though of the probability of a little evolved lunged fish finding another evolved lunged fish that just “happened” to have evolved those lungs at exactly the same time as it did – during its tiny short lifespan and they just “happened” to both be male and female and reproduce? Come on, anyone who thinks it requires more “faith” to believe that people could find another person who was born to someone rather than a little fish with no conscious awareness finding another fish and mating in the millions of years it would have taken for it to develop is really reaching for something to knock.

or have any of you heard of the fact that the oceans are increasing in salinity every year and that given the calculations of how much per year it is impossible that the oceans are more than a few thousand years old…

these are just some of the points off the top of my head that I could remember – excuse me if the details aren’t perfect (i’m sure they aren’t because i didn’t reference them but remembered them – I can send you article links if you like) but my point is that unless you have examined the details of the scientific points that creationists are trying to make – don’t bash their theories on the basis that they are somehow connected to someone/people who believe in a God and therefore somehow less scientific or valid. They make a lot of good scientific points based on observable data that even evolutionists hold to.

There are far more unanswered questions surrounding the theory of evolution than there are with the theory of intelligent design and I think you have to take a GIANT leap of faith if you are going to believe in evolution with so many gaps in the thinking and so much of the logic looping in on itself in order to explain how it works. ie. fossils are often dated based on the geological layers they are found in, based on people’s assumptions of the time frame that it took to deposit those layers, but the layers are often determined based on the fossils that are found in them…uhhhh does anyone see the flaw in that thinking???

I’m sorry but I consider myself to be very open minded and I have a great desire to be rational and logical (although I know I am not always, but I certainly strive to see the holes in my thinking) and I have looked into evolution and creationism a lot and I see a lot more rational arguments in the creationist argument than in the evolution one. (of course it depends what sources you go to, just like anything – there are a lot of people spouting all kinds of stuff that discredit themselves, because of their desire to “convert” people or something…but I don’t agree with that.

I look at it on the merit of the scientific data and plausibility.

If a scientist came up with a theory of something that explained something very well and it just happened to be the same things creationists would say, but they didn’t have any connections to a religion or used the word God or anything like that they would be much more acceptable in the eyes of the media or pretty much everyone who thinks that those who believe in God are somehow irrational or using a crutch and that it somehow discredits them.

I think that is ridiculous that anyone would think that way because basically whether you like it or not or are willing to admit it or not, in one way or another EVERYONE believes in a god – be it GOD, Muslim God, Jewish God, gods as in animism or tribalism, or yourself – when you believe you determine your own destiny (that is playing God, or at least in some way believing yourself to be godlike in some way) so I have no tolerance for people who bash others who believe in a God of some kind because they themselves are blinded to their own “religious beliefs” and their own dogma which they hold to so strongly.

i never get involved in debates like this online cause I think they are mostly pointless because the people who are debating aren’t usually going to change their mind based on what someone else has written(like me now for instance), they just want to be heard or something…but i had time on my hands and felt like putting in my two cents worth…so this is my opinion…take it or leave it but I hope at least someone will think about what I have said and be willing to look at the research from both sides with a rational and open mindset becuase they might be surprised by what they find. I was.

In reverse chronological order, for speed in reply:

I forgot to mention that there is mounds of evidence to support creationism – and hello – don’t any of you realise that science was initially even only possible because of creationist ideas and has its roots in creationism??? Something we conveniently like to forget thinking that we are so far advanced etc.

There is no evidence for creationism that has not been falsified. Yes, it’s true that Christianity advanced science in the past — which makes it doubly vexing that you accuse science of having an anti-Christian bias now, when scientific methods have only gotten tighter and more careful about determining the facts.

Creationism has added something: Profound, unabashed dishonesty. Here are several false claims that creationists are fond of employing: 1. Evolution is anti-Christian; 2. Evolution is based on faulty geology; 3. There are no transitional fossils; 4. Evolution has never been observed; 5. Scientists fabricate evidence, often.

The evolution side of the debate has ethical rules and strives to correct error; the creationist side of the debate thrives on misinformation and outright falsehoods.

Which side sounds more Christian to you?

…its not that there is a lack of evidence but that the evidence lacks credibility because people refuse to give it a place in the debate or even look at it rationally because of so many biases. This is because it is brought forward by “Christians” and the general public has a very “anti-christian” mentality and is very blatantly anti-christian in most of its thinking.

It’s not Christian vs. non-Christian. It’s evidence that can be corroborated vs. hypotheses that have been falsified. You fail to note that evolution was created by Christians, and that most advances in evolution were proposed by Christians. If we were to look at who disavows arguments made by Christians, we’d have to say the creationist side is the most anti-Christian. Be careful of wild claims that do not stand even cursory scrutiny. Linneaus, Smith, Lamarck, Darwin, Wallace, Lyell, Sedgwick, Agassiz and Gray were all Christians, most of them quite devout. Mendel was a Catholic monk who gave up his pursuit of what became genetics to take over higher duties in his religious order. The tradition of Christians continues through the 20th century — Dobzhansky was extremely devout, a refugee from Stalin’s government for religious reasons, and the guy who observed that nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution; and lately, Francis Collins, the past-director of the human genome project, is an evangelical Christian.

You reject all of their findings. Do not do that and claim that you do not exhibit the anti-Christian bias you claim to abhor.

If a buddhist or a Jewish scientist were discredited based on their religious views people would be appalled becuase of the lack of tolerance – but for some reason christianity is fairgame – have any of you ever wondered why that is?

To this point no one has accused you of anti-Christian bias. Instead, people have pointed out that your arguments lack evidence to support them. Evidence has no faith. I think you’re overheated on this point, and dead wrong on the evidence.

Dead wrong on the evidence seems to be a problem with all of your arguments.

Anyway I just thought I would bring it up. It just bugs me that athiests think that they are more “credible” because they at least *try to be rational and debate without emotion – implying that everyone else doesn’t and that is a pretty patronizing and very wrong statement…so forgive me if i sound a little strong but I just don’t like that arrogant attitude.

I rather resent your unwarranted and unevidenced assumptions that evolution is an atheist claim, when it has been advanced by Christians from the start; I resent your anti-Christian bias that makes you blind to the evidence, and to the faith of those who advance it. I resent your defense of spurious and dishonest arguments as “Christian.” We Christians do not endorse dishonesty, even in the cause of spreading the Word of God.

Have you seriously studied evolution? I don’t detect a rational analysis of the evidence available.

@Seismicmike-81 wrote “For all I know there is no genetic code in fish to grow legs, and there was never an environment that killed the ones with them. So where did the fish that first evolved into amphibians get that information?”

Isn’t it time Mike, to stop arguing from ignorance and actually read about the subject you talk about? Well, what you know is false. Fish do have the genetic code to grow legs ; it’s the genetic code that grows their fins. Flies use the same genes to construct their eyes, that humans use for their own eyes. To see how that works, there is a great book for you called “Endless Forms, Most Beautiful” by Sean B. Carroll. There are people who studied and worked hard so we can understand the world, and the knowledge is out there for you to reach. So, don’t be lazy, pick up a book and don’t believe ancient mythologies for granted, just because it’s the easy thing to do.

Rachvdg said:

The interesting thing to me is that this debate has turned into one of science vs. religion – but hello – has anyone even noticed that the creationists or the IDists are simply proposing a different theory about the development of the earth? They are not talking about religion but about scientific theories that demonstrate a different conclusion to the observable data – it just so happens that they begin with God as the starting point.

But creationists (including intelligent design advocates, who are a branch of creationism) quickly depart from “God as the starting point.” This is known as the “Oomphalos Fallacy” after the book Oomphalos published in the 19th century, arguing that evolution and most of the rest of science was wrong — God simply created life to appear old, even faking the fossils to make it appear as if life had existed previously when it hadn’t. Several Christians noted that the book claims, at heart, that God is deceptive. Of course, that is heresy to Christians. But it remains the heart of creationism today.

In Darwin’s day, many of the great naturalists of the world, the precursor’s to today’s Ph.D. biologists, were preachers. Preaching on Sunday, meeting with members of the congregation and studying nature the rest of the week. This was almost expected: God created nature, it was assumed by Christians, and therefore what nature exhibits must be from the Hand of God, truthful and accurate. Creationists have departed from that view, choosing instead to stick with the small god, the deceiver god who manufactures stars that lie about their ages and distance and speed, rocks that lie about their ages and how they got there, life that lies about its relatedness and origins, and more.

It’s okay to claim that creationism once was with the rest of Western science, claiming God as the starting point. Please understand that creationism has left that position. That is why so many of us Christians are concerned about the harmful moral effects of creationism, especially on innocent children. Creationism advocates seem to lose their ability to distinguish reality from falsehood, natural science fact from outright lie. That’s dangerous.

I don’t hear them talking about “religion” which happens to be VERY different than simply acknowledging that an intelligent being may have created something – religion is full of rules and regulations etc…which are man made efforts to try and worship/follow a certain being…so lets at least argue the same points….

Science and faith are two different issues and you can’t debate them against each other because its not in the same playing field. If you want to discredit the creationists or ID’ists at least know what they are talking about and not talking about and debate on those specific issues – have any of you who swear by evolution ever even read through some of the scientific evidence and theories that they put forth? (i’m not just talking about the overall theory that God created the earth etc…but specifics of specific events, natural laws as a result, etc…)

Yes, I’ve read all of it. I was shocked to discover, as I staffed the U.S. Senate and dealt with science policy, that creationism was still alive, more than 30 years ago. It was a problem for good science policy then, and creationism has only gone farther off the moral rails since then.

I gather you have read some of the more sciency claims of creationism – but I’ll wager you’ve not read any of the great works in science that support evolution.

I think you’ll find many, many scientists and others interested in this issue are very, very familiar with the sciency works of creationists. They are not science. Most of them are dishonest or otherwise just shoddy scholarship. They frequently constitute academic fraud.

have any of you read through some of the really technical scientific documents for the tectonic plates shifting or the separating of the continents as a result of a giant worldwide flood or the effect of a pre-flood higher oxygen level on the ability of dinosours to survive on dense vegetation and with such tiny nostrils (which would by the way make it impossible for them to have existed in our atmosphere as it is now, or even as evolutionists propose that it was – much higher in other gases – not oxygen)?

Yes. It’s quackery. Crank science at best. Agassiz falsified the worldwide flood claim in the early 19th century. To start from a false premise is one form of fraud.

Tell us: Do you also believe Kent Hovind’s bizarre claim that dinosaurs used flatulence gases to breath fire from those “tiny nostrils,” thereby giving rise to the stories of fire-breathing dragons? Just how much of the crankery do you accept without question?

Have any of you considered how the coal and oil deposits manage to be so vast across the world? These would be impossible without a major catastrophic flood compressing the vegetation (which would have been incredibly dense given the preflood conditions of higher oxygen levels, canopy layer of water and higher humidity)

You’ve never had a course in petroleum geology, I take it. Oil and gas deposits tend to be in rocks above ancient, shallow oceans, where organic matter was deposited for millions of years, not quickly in a flood.

You’re using a brief period of higher oxygen content in the atmosphere to answer questions that arise from other periods, and you’re assuming claims from that oxygen that do not stand scrutiny. Among other things, had oxygen been so high through that entire period, much of that organic material would have combusted, quickly or slowly.

I recommend you spend a year or so chasing oil deposits. You’ll see that floods do not bury organic material in a way it could become fossil fuels. If you study coal, you’ll quickly learn it was not deposited by a flood — could not be.

I have noted in this forum already that flood geology was falsified in the 19th century. The search for petroleum would be absolutely impossible under an assumption that there had been a worldwide flood that scrambled continents, a short while ago.

Check the stock market today. There is no company there that operates on a creationist paradigm. In the real world, creationism doesn’t work.

Have any of you even heard of the fact that the moon has been slowly moving away from the earth (and that the earth is moving farther from the sun) and that given the calculations by even scientists who believe in evolution and a REALLY old earth that it would have meant the moon/ sun was pretty much directly in the earth (not possible) only a few million/ years ago – which totally blows the theory of an older earth, and billions of years of evolution as it would not be possible given the calculations of where it should be now or was then…

Yes, we’ve heard the claim that it’s a new discovery, though serious scientists have been aware of the motion for years. We’re also aware of the crank claims that the Moon’s moving away means it’s very young. Have you bothered to look at the serious astronomers’ and physicists’ explanations for the speed of the separation?

You are aware, of course, that the origin of this argument with creationists comes from a distortion of the final sentence in a 1963 paper that does not support your claim, I’m sure. In short, the creationist argument depends on a classic creationist “quote mining” of a real paper in astronomy (Slichter, Louis B., “Secular Effects of Tidal Friction upon the Earth’s Rotation,” Journal of Geophysical Research 68(14), July 15, 1963). That the entire argument arises from a dishonest practice of creationists is troubling to us Christians (and should be troubling to creationists as well, but as I noted, creationism seems to poison the ethical detectors of creationists somehow).

In any case, the claim rests on no serious proposal from any one in astronomy, and it depends on serious misunderstandings of Newtonian physics dealing with gravitational effects on orbiting bodies, and a transfer of energy in that process. There’s a good, lay explanation here:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/moonrec.html

Let it suffice for this forum to say that scientists are well aware of the crank claim from creationists that the Moon’s acceleration “proves” the Earth and Moon are young, contrary to the radioisotope dating and geological evidence God left us (according to Christian theology, that is, that God left accurate evidence). It’s a crank argument, a dishonest claim that spreads ignorance to innocent children. Study the science, come back if you find a serious problem.

or the fact that given the millions of years that evolutionists claim have passed since the evolution of man there should be mountains and mountains of fossils all around the earth given the calculations (even very very very conservative calculations) of the reproduction rate of the humans in order to arrive at the population today. Even figuring in a number of potential catastrophic events in order to eliminate a few million here and there there is no way to account for why there are no bones…except for the fact that maybe people haven’t actually been around that long and the bones haven’t been able to pile up? Of course there will be tons in the oil deposits, but that still doesnt account for them all…so where are all the fossils of the transitional humans or the transitional apes for that matter.

So, here you bring up the crank science, false claim that there are no fossils, no transitionals. I don’t mean to insult you, but have you ever bothered to check whether paleontologists agree with this wacky claim?

Who told you there were no “mountains” of fossils? Are you always so gullible? Do you always allow people to tell you such whopping lies — and do you let them repeat the offense? If your excrement detector wasn’t screaming when that guy told you that, you need a new one.

Four points: First, the Himalayan Mountains have layers of fossils from the ancient, now gone, Tethys Sea. Marine fossils are extremely common here. The existence of these fossils gives rise to the dishonest creationist claim that fossils from the flood can be found on the highest mountains (the fossils are in the mountains, not on them — floods don’t do that). In the Himalayas, some of the sediments are more than 3,000 feet thick. Because of the difficulty of getting to those deposits, they are largely unexplored. Still, they falsify the claim that millions of years of fossils don’t exist.

Second, consider the Karoo Formation in southern Africa. From the Karoo we get an astounding set of transitional fossils that show the transitions from reptile to mammal — a key transitional set in the history of life, certainly, and a transition that creationists often lie about, claiming it does not exist. The Karoo itself is a massive rock formation, several thousands of feet thick, several cubic miles of fossils. There are enough fossil life forms in that one formation to populate every acre of land above the sea with teeming life. That’s just one formation, in one small part of the world.

Third, two words: Burgess Shale

Fourth, check out the website for Dinosaur National Monument, and take a tour of the fossils at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City (some views are on-line).

Also, who in their right mind would believe that it is possible for evolution to evolve apes into humans but still have apes around today?

Oh, sane people, people who recognize that it’s possible for Americans to be descended from Europeans, Africans and Asians, but for Europeans, Africans and Asians to still be around today.

That’s one of the stupidest and most dishonest claims from creationism. Evolution theory does not suggest that all ancestral species would go extinct. Worse, you assume that modern humans are descended from modern apes. That’s bizarrely dumb. Modern humans — great apes, in the classification of that great Christian, Karl Linne — share a common ancestor with other great apes, especially the chimpanzee group.

Your question can be restated like this: “Who in their right mind would believe that it is possible for evolution to evolve Smiths into Joneses but still have Smiths around today?” Why does your birth not erase your cousins from existence? I’ll wager you can figure that out.

We are cousins with the other great apes — very close cousins in the case of the chimp group — Jared Diamond’s book, The Third Chimpanzee makes the case that we are so closely related that we might accurately be classed as just another, though naked, chimp (Diamond’s book predated the discovery of another chimp species in the forests of Africa — we’d be the “fourth chimp” today). DNA confirms it. DNA is the most accurate form of evidence we have ever developed, so spectacularly accurate that we allow convicted murderers on death row to go free when the DNA contradicts the conviction. Evidence that solid demonstrates our shared ancestry with chimps.

You may wish to deny ancestry with your cousin for any number of reasons, but the fact of shared ancestry remains.

For that matter any other species from which we were supposed to have evolved from. If the theory of evolution were really correct then they should have all died out becuase the transitional forms would have been “weaker” and less evolved and only the strong ones that had mutated the extra bits to survive through the supposedly really really long periods when those survival things would have been necessary would have made it – so why are these creatures still here then and how did they manage to “survive” all the changes that would have made it necessary for the “stronger” ones to have mutated etc…

You lack major clues about how evolution works. Look up “allopatric evolution” and “sympatric evolution.” It’s difficult to untangle your errors, when you make so many. No offense, but you need more clues.

People always ask the question – who did Cain marry if the bible is really true or stuff like that (by the way he could have easily married his sister or another relative becuase there would have been plenty of time for his parents to have other kids etc.) but hello…has anyone even though of the probability of a little evolved lunged fish finding another evolved lunged fish that just “happened” to have evolved those lungs at exactly the same time as it did – during its tiny short lifespan and they just “happened” to both be male and female and reproduce?

We ask the question of Cain’s marriage because you must contradict a strict, literal interpretation of the Bible to come up with an answer. We ask it in some humor, but also in the hope that you’ll take the hint that there is much more going on in evolution than you have given thought to, and much more in scripture than you have given thought to.

I regret you haven’t taken the hint.

Yes, lungfish adaptations have been thoroughly thought out. Evolution happens to populations, not to individuals. Evolution occurs when a beneficial combination of mutations spreads through a population. How can a tall man find a mate among shorter members of his tribe? Do we really need to spell this one out to you? How can a darker skinned individual find a mate among lighter skinned tribe members?

Let me ask this another way: How can reality denying creationists ever find a mate among peoples who have developed antibiotics and red grapefruit, not to mention modern beef? How long will it take for stupidity to die out?

No offense — present company excepted, of course.

Come on, anyone who thinks it requires more “faith” to believe that people could find another person who was born to someone rather than a little fish with no conscious awareness finding another fish and mating in the millions of years it would have taken for it to develop is really reaching for something to knock.

You’re really reaching, yes.

or have any of you heard of the fact that the oceans are increasing in salinity every year and that given the calculations of how much per year it is impossible that the oceans are more than a few thousand years old…

Did you take chemistry in school? Do you know what happens when a liquid is saturated? Do you know what equilibrium means with regard to a liquid? Are you aware that the oceans are NOT increasing in salinity every year, since salt comes out of the oceans?

I’ve noted before that you should be wary of what creationists tell you. Let me upgrade that warning. Don’t believe anything a creationist tells you.

How many whoppers do you have to be hit with before you figure that out on your own?

these are just some of the points off the top of my head that I could remember – excuse me if the details aren’t perfect (i’m sure they aren’t because i didn’t reference them but remembered them – I can send you article links if you like) but my point is that unless you have examined the details of the scientific points that creationists are trying to make – don’t bash their theories on the basis that they are somehow connected to someone/people who believe in a God and therefore somehow less scientific or valid. They make a lot of good scientific points based on observable data that even evolutionists hold to.

Do not send article links. I have enough manure composting in my garden already. Please check a few of the links I’ve suggested, do not take my word for anything I’ve said here, but check it out yourself. For the sake of God and Jesus, do not take the word of creationists at face value, either. Your failure to vette their claims has led you into a mire of ignorance. You can find your way out, but it’s going to be difficult, and it will require a good compass, a great map, and a powerful light. Creationists cannot offer you any of that.

There are far more unanswered questions surrounding the theory of evolution than there are with the theory of intelligent design and I think you have to take a GIANT leap of faith if you are going to believe in evolution with so many gaps in the thinking and so much of the logic looping in on itself in order to explain how it works.

But there is this: Evolution theory works. It’s the basis of modern medicine. It’s the basis of the Green Revolution. It cures diseases and feeds millions.

There is not even a hypothesis for intelligent design, and despite efforts to argue to the contrary, in federal court, in fair argument, intelligent design was found to be religiously-based dogma, not science. Don’t take my word for it — that’s what the creationists said, under oath. Were they lying to the judge, or were they lying to you? Did you put them under oath and threaten to jail them for perjury? You decide when they told the truth.

ie. fossils are often dated based on the geological layers they are found in, based on people’s assumptions of the time frame that it took to deposit those layers, but the layers are often determined based on the fossils that are found in them…uhhhh does anyone see the flaw in that thinking???

Fossils are dated comparatively based on layers — based on the assumption that God doesn’t shoot dice with the Earth, much, and that gravity is constant. If gravity is constant, the oldest stuff gets laid down first, in the deepest layers.

But we also have lake varves, ocean sediment layers, a dozen different radioactive isotopes, ice cores, erosion, thrusting up, DNA, and dendrochronology, to date fossils and rocks. Interestingly, all of these sources corroborate what the geologists, paleontologists and biologists say. Several different kinds of science, all of them corroborating evolution independently, all of them denying creationism independently.

You asked about a mountain of fossils, which I pointed you towards — what about mountains of evidence? Such mountains exist for evolution, not for creationism. Christians assume that these mountains of evidence, as a second testament of God, are accurate.

Will you deny the mountains God made, yes or no?

I’m sorry but I consider myself to be very open minded and I have a great desire to be rational and logical (although I know I am not always, but I certainly strive to see the holes in my thinking) and I have looked into evolution and creationism a lot and I see a lot more rational arguments in the creationist argument than in the evolution one. (of course it depends what sources you go to, just like anything – there are a lot of people spouting all kinds of stuff that discredit themselves, because of their desire to “convert” people or something…but I don’t agree with that.

No, the authority of the source is not the deciding criterion. Look at the evidence. You’re not looking at the evidence.

I look at it on the merit of the scientific data and plausibility.

If a scientist came up with a theory of something that explained something very well and it just happened to be the same things creationists would say, but they didn’t have any connections to a religion or used the word God or anything like that they would be much more acceptable in the eyes of the media or pretty much everyone who thinks that those who believe in God are somehow irrational or using a crutch and that it somehow discredits them.

It’s not a bias against Christianity. It’s a bias against irrationality and abuse of evidence. Scientists and Christians put high value on the truth, on verifiable physical facts, on theories that do not require magical interventions against the laws of nature — that is, against the laws of nature God made — in order to work. Creationists don’t appear to value evidence, or God’s creation, that way, and pose magical models that cannot be supported instead.

Magic or reality? Which is it?

I think that is ridiculous that anyone would think that way because basically whether you like it or not or are willing to admit it or not, in one way or another EVERYONE believes in a god – be it GOD, Muslim God, Jewish God, gods as in animism or tribalism, or yourself – when you believe you determine your own destiny (that is playing God, or at least in some way believing yourself to be godlike in some way) so I have no tolerance for people who bash others who believe in a God of some kind because they themselves are blinded to their own “religious beliefs” and their own dogma which they hold to so strongly.

Excuse me, but as a lifelong, practicing and active Christian, I have little tolerance for people who tell whopping lies like creationism to other Christians (you shouldn’t have been abused that way, and I’m sorry you were so abused, for example). Especially I think we need to stand up for honesty and ethics in teaching things to innocent children.

Stick to the evidence, do not make up stories that cannot be corroborated or supported by the evidence. That’s not too much to ask. It’s more than most creationists can offer.

i never get involved in debates like this online cause I think they are mostly pointless because the people who are debating aren’t usually going to change their mind based on what someone else has written(like me now for instance), they just want to be heard or something…but i had time on my hands and felt like putting in my two cents worth…so this is my opinion…take it or leave it but I hope at least someone will think about what I have said and be willing to look at the research from both sides with a rational and open mindset becuase they might be surprised by what they find. I was.

They are only pointless if you cannot be persuaded by reason and evidence. Are you close-minded, deluded by lying creationists? Or can you look at the evidence fairly?

Do Christians favor the falsehoods, or the accurate observations that are in the light for all to see?

Is that a difficult decision?

(I’ll probably repost this at my site, Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub, so I can include more links that will likely make it through the spam filters here.)

Thats typical. Claim to have tons of evidence, run away when your claims are rebutted.

Don’t you ever wonder.. if the creationist side is true, why would they lie at all, ever? More so, why lie consistently? A big red light should be flashing in your brain the moment you saw how easily the ’sources’ of creationist junk were proven to be falsehoods and deceptions.

The statement about bothering Ed speaks volumes about your character as well. Its a blatant attempt to run away from your position and distract with ridiculous claims. You see, this is how rational discussions work.. one person makes a claim, another responds, the first person comes back to retort.. only instead, you run away. That is admitting defeat, in the most cowardly way.

Oh, and if you know of a non-wierd creationist, that is news to me. You yourself behave like most of the creationsists I have spoken to.. irrational, denying clear and provable facts, responding with attempts to distract and avoid the issue, finally running away when you realize you don’t have the tools to win in any rational discussion.

PS. By your standards, the pope is not a practicing christian, nor is anyone who follows the teachings of the catholic church. Interesting, isn’t it?

I believe in the creation. It seems to me, and mind you, I am just one man but the big bang kind of reminds me of this. I have a whole box of various odd parts. Gears, pins, bearings, etc, etc. I throw them up in the air and when they hit the ground, they are a running watch.
That is what the evolutionists idea of how the world came into being strikes me. Most logical humans realize that this world couldn’t have come into existence out of nothing. There had to be a being out there before the world existed to guide this all into place.

The whole debate would be over tomorrow if folks would learn the definition of SPECIES. Species: organisms that can mate and have fertile babies. That’s it.

Micro-evolution simply means there are some changes but the plumbing still fits.

At some point the doo dad no longer fits in the wing wang. Oops, there it is! A new species.

Believing in micro-evolution but not macro-evolution is the same as believing in inches but not in miles. (Not my quote but wishing it was.)

All the world’s a stage and most of you are showing your asses.
Who says you have to start with hydrogen? If you’re so stupid as to not get the point of the argument of chance, You’re too stupid to talk to.

There is as much evidence for creation as there is for evolution, at least as much and you choose to ignore it. You hold out your evidence and expect the world to buy into a stupid theory which is no more scientific than the “magic” you’re so fond of making fun of.

If you have any background in mathematics, and live in the current century you know that there is no comparison nor difference between time and space. Therefore the “big Bang” happened yesterday and your ancestor crawled out of the goo last week.
Have you ANY idea how absurd you sound?
Your ploy of calling those who disagree with evolution “knuckle dragger’s” Is a second grade form of argumentation. Which means it is just an insult to soothe your fractured pride when someone doesn’t kiss your ass.

Most of these postings are elementary at best. Infantile would be more accurate.

I’m from a place called Europe and for me it is funny how this creationism has become such a big thing. For me Evolution (a theory) is something that doesn’t contradict god in any way.

If Evolution is just a theory, why doesn’t the same apply for Creationism?

And why couldn’t god, who has created earth some 6000 years ago, have had the cunning idea for the species to evolve over this period of time? I guess it would have been boring for him to watch the planet and nothing would change over time.

When did you earn this degree? 1940?

To Adam:

I also live in Europe and am a christian. But I don´t belive in the Evolution theory becuse there seams to me as it is hard to get it to work. And I think it contradicts what the Bible says.

There are alot of things I´v read or thought about that makes it hard for me to beleve in evolution….

1. I think the natural selection would prevent animals to change more then a little. That is, somewhere along the line some animals would have had to become worse before getting better in the evolution chain.
(the Eye is one of the more famous examples where it has been calculated that it would reqire atlest 20 eyes or so, that did not funktion before a new type of eye was evolved)
So how could they survive long enough to create a new species that were better before going extinct and where are all those in between forms of life?

2. There are alot of time restricting tings that makes an old earth most likely impossible.

I´ll put a link here cuse it will explain better and give information on where the info is taken from at the end of the page.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/4005.asp

I´v heard and read more then you can read here … but you get the picture.

About what the bible says:

1. God created man from dust from the ground. Not from apes or some other living thing.

2. The earth was created in six days … why would it say mornig and evening and number the days if it was longer (or shorter) time?

3. If God used evolution it would make him a God that is evil or don´t care, since it is the strongest or most fit that survive. How could the Bible say that all was good in the world before the fall of man if it had death and suffering?

now, when people ask for proof that God has created I can´t and don´t try to give any… cuse there is no proof. And there is no proof of evolution.
Only of changes within spieces, and that is not evolution. I think micro evolution as some call it is deciving cuse it is not evolution as I see it. I just call it change. You can´t change one Spice to another spice witch would/could be called evolution. any breeder of any animal knows that you can´t go too far when trying to make a better dog or horse or whatever. it just won´t work.

So what can I say… we all belive in something. I belive in God, some don´t. For me it feels sad, as I know that if you don´t recive jesus there is no hope in the comming judgment.

But I´m not going to force anyone to belive i Jesus. That would be against Gods will as he wanted everyone to have a free choice. But I will try tell people that they need to be saved. And I will try to show that there are good reasons to belive.

I´m sure I´v had many wrong spellings so sorry about that. My english is not perfect.

To Rene:

The evidence you speak of… did you see it evolve or is it someting you belive…. cuse as far as I know evidence is when you know someting.

How do you know they evolved from one another and where not created seperate as similar beings?

To Ed Darrel:

Since I´m not sure what DNA research you are talking about I would like to get link to the information you are talking about.
or reference if it´s in a book. or atleast clarify it some more…

Anyway, I don´t see any problem in that God would be using/creating similar DNA instruktions to create different beeings…. but maybe I missunderstand you…

While talking about DNA. Have you read point 8 in the link I provided above? ( in post nr 179)
What do you think about that?
Always intresting to know both point of views.

Why is it that whenever these debates arise, the most inexpert in the fields of evolutionary science and religious theology rush to the comment podium and spew venom at each other. My own impression is that it generally seems the evolutionists display by far the most hatred and intolerance, but certainly both sides are guilty of this. How often do you suppose people’s minds are changed by name calling and belittling others? Each of us has our belief systems: theist, deist, atheist, etc. All are unprovable belief systems. Regardless of which might be right, is it so hard to be tolerant of alternative views?

@Flory Michaelson: Atheist is not, contrary to popular belief among believers, a belief system. If it was can you tell me the name of the belief system for people that don’t believe in the tooth fairy?

Oh and the reason evolutionists get so heated with ID/Creationism is that you’re trying to hold a debate where the other party to various degrees mis-represents what has been said, just plain lies, says there’s loads of evidence yet never actually presents any of it, believes they are proved right if they opposing view can’t explain absolutely everything and when evidence that contradicts their view point is presented puts their hands over their ears and shouts NOT LISTENING, NOT LISTENING is very easy to get irritated wouldn’t you say?

I think the reason that I’m fascinated with these dialogues is that I have trouble understanding how people can believe and say the seemingly bone-headed things that they do, while at the same time being apparently normal, sane people. Most of the adults I knew growing up were ‘good folks’, well-meaning, perceptive, intelligent, helpful . . . so how could they perpetuate the lies that they do? Why do we systematically lie to our children? And make no mistake: the claims of religion are lies. If that statement bothers you, then for the sake of argument, so you can follow my train of thought, amend it to this: The claims of all religions except yours are lies. Either way, the majority of parents around the world are teaching their children utter falsehoods. Yet they obviously aren’t evil. And the majority of those children never realize the truth; they teach the same falsehoods to their children in turn. The damage this is doing to our society as a whole, the sheer scale, is mind-boggling.

Is the situation hopeless, or is there some way that this cycle could be broken? I believe the cycle can be broken, by giving as many people as possible the powerful mental tools of systematic reasoning, the ability for rational thought. Almost everyone is capable of it, but it does not come naturally; it’s often counter-intuitive. And no, I don’t mean we must become emotionless automatons. On the contrary, creativity, lateral thinking, ‘whole-minded’ reasoning, etc. are extremely important to the process. To truly behave ‘rationally’, we must be very much in tune with our emotional responses.

In this particular debate, we find creationists making fantastic, unsupportable claims while at the very same time accusing the evolutionists of exactly the same thing! Clearly there is some sort of cognitive disconnect here, perhaps many different ones. I would feel very much like I was contributing something of value to my community if I could identify the most fundamental cognitive problems here. I’ve got several possibilities in mind.

1] ‘Scale’ is a difficult concept. As human animals we basically understand concepts of scale as they relate to our everyday experience: small, big, really big, huge, too big to see all at once. Anything that’s too big to visualize is all lumped in together. That includes: countries, oceans, planets, stars (from dwarf stars to supergiants), lightyears, galaxies, galaxy clusters. They all seem the same size to us (at least on a visceral level). The same goes for anything too small to see: bacteria, viruses, molecules, atoms, and subatomic particles, although vastly different in scale, all seem about the same size to us.

The same can be said of TIME SCALE. Our sense of time is terrible. We’ve all experienced “A watched pot never boils,” for instance. Or how a single important life moment can seem eternal as it’s happening, while at the very same time seem fleeting. A single day can seem to pass in a rush, or it can seem interminable. The time span of my own life is difficult to wrap my mind around, let alone a thousand years. Or ten thousand. Or 2 billion. To an intuitive perception, all of these time spans are too large to visualize, and are lumped together.

It takes an understanding of mathematics to begin to make sense of scale. And without a sense of the scale involved, many fundamental concepts of evolution seem completely nonsensical. Too many of us have woefully underdeveloped mathematics skills and concepts.

2] Lots of people have differing concepts of what “science” is. Most of us do not fully understand what “the scientific method” is all about. We don’t tend to use it in everyday life. It’s not intuitive. There’s a reason for that, I think. Our distant ancestors, living in the wild, would not have found it advantageous to collect data regarding whether or not they were being stalked by a predator. Jumping to a fully formed conclusion based on scant evidence is what we do, and we do it well. But the scientific method is extremely useful, even in many ordinary situations; learning how to use it, or at least how to recognize its appropriate use is extremely beneficial to us modern humans. There are many online resources with overviews of the scientific method, with varying degrees of detail and discussion about the finer points.

3] This is related to #2. We tend to make judgments about people concerning how reliable or trustworthy they are. Then if we deem them to be good people, we tend to believe whatever they say. If I love my grandfather and he’s always been helpful to me, and reliable, then when he tells me that I’ll inherit my own planet in the afterlife, I might believe him. (The religion of my wife’s family actually says something like this, and they tell this to my children). NOT believing what my revered ancestor believed might seem like dishonoring his or her memory.

Anyway, I have been following this conversation with great interest! I am particularly proud of the several posters that have been the ‘anchors’, so to speak, who have on the whole kept the quality fairly high. It makes me arch my eyebrows whenever someone says that the evolutionists are being intolerant, but I suspect they haven’t read past midiguru’s comment (#13). It is to be expected, of course, that as a person’s emotionally-based beliefs are challenged, they will lash out more than someone whose rationally-based opinions are at stake, because they will feel threatened.

Thanks to all of you, and please, keep it up!

As for evidence, every thing you see around you is evidence.
It was a tragic accident of nature or a creation by a very intelligent being.

If you Choose to believe the former, you see everything in that light because you haven’t the maturity to admit there is something in the universe more important than you. And I might add ..you are going to have to answer to. Believe it or not.

By buying in to the lies of evolution you think you’ve found an answer as to why you’re the center of it all. This is typical egoistic,”I am god” emotionalism.

You may feel real smart when you call creationists “mouth breathing knuckle dragger’s ” But God says you are a fool.

I’ll let him be the judge.

@Edward A:
Is that your normal mode of debate? Storming into a room, accusing most debaters of being stupid and infantile while demonstrating your own silly misconceptions in a derogatory tone? Like you do in post #173.

Frankly, you come across as a complete jackass, insulting people and pretending to be knowledgeable about scientific matters when you obviously aren’t.

1) Space and time are not the same thing. The concept of spacetime is a convenient intellectual shorthand (like the mathematical use of vectors which is a way to represent multiple variables using a single variable).

2) I don’t know what “the argument of chance” is, but I’m guessing it’s another misconception about evolution being random, which is not the case.

3) I too would like to see this overwhelming evidence for creation. Or are you just going to spout more abuse?

So all of you arguers believe it is just as easy for us to evolve from whatever it is you say we do as it is for a bacteria to “evolve” into a worse strain of antibiotic resisnent bacteria,

All I’m saying is that if you believe that in another billions of years that bacteria will sprout arms and legs, tear out of your body and start talking and REASONING like humans, then you may have a case on evolution, but seeing as you probably all agree that that is completely retarted, i dont need to worry

didn’t intelligent design evolve from creationism…?

Ed Darrell-Count me in as one who doesn’t quite understand your faith coinciding with evolution, etc.

Faith is not a rational choice. Science functions on rationality. It’s not that the ends of science and faith differ much, even when they differ. But one will never make a rational case for faith that stands up to scientific scrutiny.

Watch, and watch carefully: Most of the current conflicts between religion and science occur when religionists try to claim that faith has a rational basis, and therefore is on an equal footing with science. That’s where creationism goes off the rails, for example.

I can’t reconcile it, and I won’t ask you to try, either. But I appreciate more than you can ever know your support in trying to strike a blow for rationality in dealing with the things in life and the universe that we can measure, and which are under the purview of science.

Oddly and interestingly, I think when non-believers campaign for rationality and reason, they carry on much of the work Jesus calls us to. And, to me, creationists work against that same call.

I can’t argue against reason. My faith won’t let me.

Oh, by the way — there are about 3 billion places on those chromosmal chains to compare — only 56 differences? Consider the odds against such coincidence. Either it’s family, or God is a heckuva joker.

Ed, it is true what wtf says. Leave them alone, don’t argue with them. If god will ask a scientific question at the end of times before letting you in paradise, the scientists/you will win anyway (hahahaha). It’s perhaps better to go to a pub and drink a beer (that could be a new hobby of yours, Ed) so we can laugh with them without them knowing…Cheers!

And yet, we seem to know more about it that the believers.. how interesting.

schildan is a clever troll. +1 Internets for you, however it is much more lulzy if you troll the creationists (just so you know)

My point is that non-believers always seem to think that creationist do not believe in mutation of species. This is a false assumption and it is once again stated in this strip.
As a creationist I believe in mutation and everything else that can happen with species, but always within the boundaries of their design, the information that has always existed in their genomes.

To Ed Darrel:

Have I offended you by being critical to your belife since you start to try and make me look not intelligent?
I´m not trying to hint at something like that about you with the things I say.

Giving absurd statments like:
“…that he was not the product of your grandmother’s womb, and the same for your father, and for you”

meaning that that would be something I belive, realy only lowers you from cunning to desperate.
try not to have presumed Ideas about people you don´t know. I only try to use the fackts that I´v been given, and show how I think about it.

Ofcourse I belive that DNA can prove that my uncle are related to me. That was never the point.

Apes are more similar in their apperence to humans than other creatures so it makes perfect sence to me that their DNA structure would be similar.
But that does not mean that we must come from them.

I don´t see why it would be so strange if God made it similar, can you explain why you think so?

Would he avoid making it similar becuse some day somebody would come up with the evolution theory???
Then he would have alost of things to avoid considering how many different Ideas there are out there.

I will look in to what the new link you provided has to say when I get the time to do it. Now I´ll have to go to sleep for today, since I have to go to work tomorrow. I´ll try to give a better response when I get the time to look around more.

What if this were my hobby?

I don’t think that it matters how God would have made everything. Someone at some point, would have come up with some ridiculous theory that would give everyone an opportunity to run from their Creator. I don’t think that you can dispute that there is a God. He has given us plenty of evidence. The Universe screams at us that there was a Creator. You can’t get something from nothing. There had to be a beginning somewhere. This all could not be the product of billions of years of nothing evolving.
You don’t have to run from the reality of God. He has given you a way to be with Him, free from your sin. John 3:16, Revelation 3:20, 1 Timothy 1:15-16.
I know…everyone thinks I’m the religious freak now. Please, look with unbiased eyes at the evidence… It is in His favor.
Questions, concerns, or ridicule….facebook me, or email me srmollins@hotmail.com

To Ed Darrell

I guess I understood your remark wrong then as I got it as something you realy thought I belived. sorry

Yes I guess I should have been more clear, I did not mean to say that I though evolutionist belive we come from modern day apes. Took it for granted that it would be understood anyway…. so sorry for not being clear enough.

“It would be unusual for God to have created in such a way as to make it appear that people are related when they are not,”

This is something I have not said… I belive all people are related all the way to Adam and Eve

or that life forms are related when they are not, because that makes God a deceiver. We Christians reject the idea that God is deceptive. It’s a theological issue, not a biological issue”

Well, I do not think of it as being deceptive. God could have a reason for making it similar that we do not know of.

Maybe he knew that it would be helpfull for scientists to have an animal so similar to find cures for diseases.
Since sin has seperated us from God, many people don´t have any contact with God. So maybe he prepared it so similar becuse he wanted us to understand our own biology better even as we don´t listen to him.

But ofcourse that is just a thought that I just had. I don´t know if it is like that and I haven´t even thought enough about it to see if the thought has any error in it.
But so far I think its a possability.
And then it would not be an act of deciving but an act of caring.

To Ed Darrel:

“Having a reason to deceive does not make a deception something other than a deception. ”

As I said I don´t think it was meant to be deceptive so to me what you just said totaly different to what I said.
God did not intend it to be deciving. You are making it something deciving out of your own point of view.
And I belive you can make almost anything as being deceptive if you just want to.
How do you know that the evolution theory is not a deciving idea? Made to decive peaople to think God did not make?
You know, a lie is more powerfull if you mix some truth in to it. So when the devil wants to lie, ofcurse he makes lies out of what seams resonable.

Now I guess I have to clerify that I do not say that the evolutionist are devils or trying to lie :P
But everyone can be decived, even christians. So what I am saying is how do you know that it was not the devil who planted the evolition thoughts in scientist minds?

In what way is evolution more consistant with what the Bible teaches?

“I’ve concluded at length that way too many Christians don’t know what Christians believe, or why, and so do not recognize radical departures from the faith.”

Well, on this I agree. Thou I doubt we think about it the same way.

This long winded conversation started with a simple cartoon.
The evidence for creation is all around you boys. It happens to be the creation its self.

I can pump iron and become a lot stronger,get a vaccination and ward off polio,but I’ll remain a human.

A resistant virus is just a little stronger virus and no creationist argues this fact.

Show me a fossil with remaining evidence of gills and half developed lungs. Or something with scales developing into feathers. You can’t because no such thing has nor ever will be found.

When a “scientific” field has to resort to false claims of evidence- eg.piltdown-man;(purposely scorched and varnished to be made to look old) Nebraska-man;(built entirely around a tooth, later to be found to be that of a PIG) Neanderthal man (later found to be an old man with arthritis), Lucy the mammy of us all (yuk;yuk)- I would say there is plenty of good reason to question their motive.

Why does the field of biology refuse to acknowledge the second law of thermodynamics,when all the other fields of science rely on it?

Why are proven errors still in our text books? Ernst Haekel’s fish gill drawings, the “tree” of life, the supposed ancestor of the modern horse. All these were proven wrong over 75 years ago and evolution refuses to let go of them.
WHY do you suppose that is?

The reason is obvious, They don’t want to admit that there may be something greater than their own egos.

Show me a half fish/bird and I’ll buy in, otherwise you are
wizzing into the wind.

Why are

Why do some people find it so hard to believe that someone can be a creationist and evolutionist at the same time. Being a believer in Creationism or Intelligent Design doesn’t mean that you believe that everything magically popped into existence fully developed. The term says nothing about the method of creation.

I consider myself a Christian. I know that many of you may not understand why, and I don’t expect you to. I also know that many atheists think that Christians are pig-headed assholes who don’t know what the heck they’re talking about. I am not insulted by this, as I know that some who call themselves Christians are. As was said before, it is really only the uneducated or ridiculously closed minded Christians who believe that evolution is not possible. I believe that that is mostly due to their upbringing, their parents, and the church they belong to. You can’t blame a person for the environment they were born into. I know that as a person grows older and matures, they should begin to think for themselves, make their own decisions, and decide their own beliefs, but that just sometimes doesn’t happen.

Some quote Genesis literally and argue that the world and all it’s creatures were created in 6 days. Evolutionists and Big Bang theorists argue that that simply isn’t possible. But do you think that to God, a day is merely 24 hours? A day to God could be a million years, for all we know, and we don’t. God very well could have induced the Big Bang just to get things going, and then decided to let things go on their own. I don’t really think time matters to a deity, no matter who or what you believe that deity to be.

I believe that this world and everything in it was created by God, and it doesn’t really matter to me how he did it. You may question my belief in God all you want, but I wouldn’t be able to make it through this world without believing there was some actual reason for this madness and everything will turn out alright in the end. I have no evidence for you, except for the fact that some things happen that just cannot be explained by science.

I think the bottom line is that it is very unlikely that we will ever really know how the creation of this world came about. I still wonder why people argue about it. There are some people that will never change their way of thinking, and I think it’s much more practical to look to the present and future instead of bickering about the past. However it happened, it happened and that’s never going to change.

There it is. Tear it apart as you will, and I know some of you will.

@edward a.
You are making an attempt to misrepresent the second law of thermodynamics. Lets clear up some of your errors so that the next time you make those statements you will know yourself to be a liar.

The second law of thermodynamics only applies to closed systems. Anyone who says otherwise, anyone who claims the earth is a closed system, if horribly wrong and/or a liar.

As long as the sun shines on the earth, the earth is not a closed system. Its that simple. Now.. did you already know this and try to trick people, or were you ignorant and someone tricked you into believing this LIE about science?

Creationist and christian apologetics websites are well aware that they are misrepresenting what the second law of thermodynamics states. The lie, on purpose.

Did you lie, or did they lie to you?

Now, I encourage you to double check what I just said about the second law of thermodynamics. I want you to be utterly certain how wrong you were, and then come back here and admit it. Few creationists are brave enough and have enough strength of character to admit when they are wrong, but you are in the position of being able to show your true colors.

I also know that many atheists think that Christians are pig-headed assholes who don’t know what the heck they’re talking about.

No, actually I find that attitude from creationists — did you see that post above from Edward A? He’s assuming much that is not in evidence, much more that has been directly rebutted in this thread, and much else that is pure hallucination.

Can you find any similarly clueless response from any non-Christian on this board?

@Edward A:

What, you never ordered your clean laundry?

Order arises from disorder all the time, provided you add energy to the process. Claiming that this is not possible is ridiculous in the extreme. Every artifact you observe around you, along with every plant and every animal, is evidence of this. How would they be able to exist otherwise? How?

Try to get up to speed. Your argument about the second law of thermodynamics is so stupid and self-evidently false that most other creationists have abandoned it.

It always depresses me to see when people are not even trying to think for themselves. If you had, you’d quickly see how ludicrous such a statement is. But obviously you’re not in the habit of verifying the truth of what you’re told. Right now that makes you look like a “foo”.

Hm, I’d say a laser always needs additional energy to produce coherent light. But the other examples sound correct. In the case of star formation gravity does the work “free of charge”, and snowflakes are a nice example of crystal formation happening as a result of decreased heat.

Although, one has to be careful to distinguish between order and complexity. It might be that a snowflake is actually complex rather than ordered; I’m not sure.

As for complexity, there are of course plenty of creationists claiming fervently that complexity cannot emerge spontaneously (they say things like “mutation can’t add genetic information, it can only delete it” or “mutations are always harmful”), but this is also false. Conway’s Game of Life is a nice example of complexity arising from a system with simple rules.

Plenty of creationists such as myself believe in evolution, or rather micro evolution. I believe in it but i also believe god made the world.

Sorry to say this but after spending an interesting half hour (!) reading these posts, which are great btw) I get the distinct impression that there are a lot of trolls feeding the creationists and another bunch feeding the evolutionists.

Personally, I’m an evolutionist. Creationism and ID is bunkum, but would you please stop feeding the trolls.

Oh and fyi a religious belief and a scientific outlook are totaly compatible. Just because someone believes in a higher power does NOT mean that they deny scientific proof, theory or evidence. Even Einstein, when asked about quantum theory said, “God does not play dice”, or words to that effect.

Have fun children.

I read the majority of these comments, and I have one thing to say: It’s a comic. It’s meant to be funny, so why does everyone want to get into the deeper argument? Just because there is a controversial subject at the center of this comic doesn’t mean you have to bring it up and ruin the comedy. Accept it as what it is, please.

And in case anyone is wondering (as I know they will be) I’m an atheist who supports evolution. That’s my angle.

Now, laugh at the strip and move on with your lives, geez.

Of course things evolve (adapt) but given the extreme complexity of the universe as a whole and it’s parts and a lack of any hard evidence, ie one species changing to another etc., I see no reason for those of you in the evolutionist camp to relentlessly bash and spitefully badmouth those who dare to question your beliefs.

Are you claiming we haven’t seen speciation?

Speciation is actually quite a common event. Fruit fly researchers, to pick one example, have to work hard to keep their lab populations from speciating spontaneously (especially in pesticide research).

You’re not really expecting us to believe your claim that broccoli is just the same old mustard it always was, are you? Radishes aren’t different from Brussels sprouts?

Can we bad mouth you and bash you when you say science hasn’t observed what science HAS observed hundreds of times?

I think an important distinction needs to be made between belief and knowing. When we say ‘I believe’, it includes a doubt. You don’t have to believe in something if you know it to be true..you just know it. There is proof for much of the evolution theories but none for the creationist theory thus creationists have to believe in it.. eg I don’t believe I have a left hand..I know I do. I do believe that there may have been some intervention in the development of our species but I have no proof and so it remains a belief..complete with doubt. Those who are stupid enough to wage war based on a belief must be incredibly insecure. I measure a persons intelligence based on their tolerance for unanswered questions. The unknown is only something to fear if you BELIEVE it to be fearful.

Jeff, it’s not a straw man argument if the positions are held by the person.

When you get to graduate philosophy, and to the part about where we cannot say something is not true when it is easily replicable in high school labs, let us know.

Philosophically, pigs can fly. In reality, they don’t.

Here’s the issue: “Micro” evolution is the same thing as “macro” evolution — same mechanisms, same results, same everything, except time. “Micro” evolution can be distinguished from “macro” only in retrospect. We look back and say, “Hmmmm. Broccoli really isn’t mustard any more, is it. Hmmm. The old aurochs is gone, and what we have is a new species of bovine.” In laboratory testing and in observations in the wild, macro evolution is commonly observed.

So, if creationists “believe” in micro evolution, we know part of their problem — they should become Christian, and believe in God, and believe that Jesus is their savior. But science is not a place for beliefs. Beliefs, like the belief that Semmelweiss was wrong because everyone knows that germs don’t cause disease because the preacher said so, get us into difficulty and kill people.

Tuberculosis is still tuberculosis, sure — but it’s immune to most antibiotics now, and it’s much more potent in the resistant species. But while we’re on microorganisms, swine flu doesn’t affect swine anymore, but instead has leapt to humans with deadly effect. Similarly, Simian Immunosuppressive Virus has a daughter species that leapt to other great apes, and then to humans, as Human Immunosuppressive Virus. Same “kind?” That’s a weasel answer that just doesn’t cut it. The cat at my feet is related to the Bengal tiger, but no rational, sane and honest person would claim that “kind” means they are the same, and not evolved into much different animals.

You start out denying speciation, and then you weasel with the “kinds” claim that dismisses speciation as not quite the disproof of creationism creationists had been looking for. Quit moving the goal posts and deal with the data.

Sure micro-organism evolution results in other micro organisms — except when it doesn’t. Some of the oldest fossils we have are single-celled creatures that banded into colonies, called stromatolites. We still have stromatolites today. Are they the same as a free-floating single cell? How about jelly fish? They are also (most “species) just colonies of cells. At what point do you draw a line and say it’s a colony and not just a group of single cells? At what point do you draw the line and say it’s a single organism, and not just a colony of similar cells?

That was one of the issues Darwin blew away. Creationists of his day — including Darwin — had believed that species are fixed, and do not vary much within a species. Darwin found that to be untrue, in hundreds of species all around the world. He discovered that we can’t draw a bright line between species, often — a phenomenon demonstrated spectacularly in “ring species,” groups of similar animals that, from one spot on the ring to the next, are just small differences away from their neighbors; but once we go around the ring, we discover the small differences have built up, and we have at least two separate species (in the case of herring gulls and the lesser black-backed gulls), or maybe several (in the case of the California or San Fernando Valley or Pacific Coast salamanders).

The gold standard of macro evolution, in science, is when one population can no longer interbreed with a parent or sibling population. Voila! A new species, macroevolution in real time, on the hoof, easily observable to any honest person.

Where are you going to claim the goal posts have been moved to now?

There is no part of evolution theory that has not been replicated and experienced first hand.

So creationism is a practice of denial of fact, and belief in things that are not. Stevie Wonder has some advice for people who do that.

“The sad thing is that realising that your parents and church lied to you about something as obvious and demonstrable as evolution generally leads people to rejecting the less demonstrable things that they were also taught.”

Why is this sad? I’m thrilled to have let go of all the other nonsense, as well as creationism.

This is for reckoner,

Not sure where to leave this reply but here goes. The Christian and Jewish God is not “all-powerful” in the sense that He can make a rock so big that He cannot move it, or that He can violate His own nature, which is to be utterly holy.

You asked,

Why would an all-powerful creator need to take human form, and sacrifice himself to himself, to circumvent a law that he created, in order to save us from his own wrath?

He chose to take on human form as a completely selfless demonstration of His love for us. His nature is other than ours, and thus not totally comprehendible by us, but He did not sacrifice Himself to Himself, and to say so is an overly simplistic understanding of a pretty complex theological subject (the trinity). He illuminated the law, illustrated the law, and even enunciated it, but your question seems to imply that He could have simply chosen to ignore His utter holiness, violate his own nature and choose to redeem us without a blood sacrifice. This he could not do and to do so would have made our lives, and their redemption, worthless.

Thank you for your respectful and considerate question.

Okay, well try these on for size. Dr. Donald Bierle, Biologist, Dr. Gary Parker, Biology/Paleantology, plus the numerous evolutionists who themselves admit what many of you will not.

Such as

Dr. David B. Nitts, Department of Geology, University of Oklahoma:

Despite the bright promise that paleontology provides a means of “seeing” evolution, it has presented some nasty difficulties for evolutionists, the most notorious of which is the presence of “gaps” in the fossil record. Evolution requires intermediate [or transitional] forms between species and paleontology does not provide them. . . . (Evolution, vol. 28, 1974, p. 467)

N. Macbeth:

Darwinism has failed in practice. The whole aim and purpose of Darwinism is to show how modern forms descended from ancient forms, that is, to construct reliable phylogenies (genealogies or family trees). In this it has utterly failed. (American Biology Teacher, November 1976, p. 495, reference from Gish, Evolution: The Fossils Say No, p. 176)

Dr. Richard B. Goldschmidt, who was a professor at the University of California:

It is true that nobody thus far has produced a new species or genus, etc., by macromutation. It is equally true that nobody has produced even a species by the selection of micromutations. . . .

This is a tired thread, with both sides fully convinced and not persuadable, but Jesus lives. He is God the Son. He’s God’s remedy for the sickness of soul that mankind suffers from. “Taste and see that the Lord is good. How blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him.”

Can’t find a reply button so posting this new, hopefully final, post. Wintermute, I have not claimed that biologists are incompetent, malicious, imbeciles, or that they have an evil agenda. Where, in anything I’ve posted, did you come up with that?

I know I do it too (my statement about hundreds of working biologists should not have been made without being prepared to provide examples), largely the nature of this type of forum and the feeling of limited rebuttal space, etc. but you are also fond of not a few sweeping generalizations yourself my friend.

If you find no value in the debate forum then your continued prodding and poking of me in this space makes no sense. I wonder if it’s a worthless forum because evolutionists routinely suffer so badly in it, or just because of its inherent flaws?

As for my remarks about Jesus, the name of this blog is “unreasonablefaith.” It’s the overarching theme of most of what is written here. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed? Ha ha. lol

I feel a little like Albert Brooks in the film “Defending Your Life.” I’m happy with the defense I’ve made. I think it’s at least as cogent and comprehensive as anything posted here rebutting it. I think I’ll just make this my closing statement.

By the way, this is one debate the evolutionists won, but as you said, “debaters frequently ignore the evidence in favour of making so many absurdly false claims that their opponent cannot hope to rebut them all in any detail in the time allowed. This gives the appearance that the points are valid, which is purely an artefact of the debate format.” Yes I’m aware that I left off the word “Creationists.” That’s how us Creationists roll with it. :)

One final remark, and answer to your question: When I wrote, ” I think what bothers people most are that there are sincere, thinking people who HAVE considered the evidence, who do not share your opinion.”

You retorted

So far, you’ve failed to identify any of these people. There’s a reason for that.

I was inelegantly referring to myself, and others like me who post in places like this (again perhaps an unforgivable superlative) by the hundreds.

By the way, it’s all about Jesus. He’s the only thing that’s permanent about any of this.

It’s not adaptation when the genes change and the changes are passed from one generation to the next. That’s naturally selected, and it’s evolution.

This thread is digressing slightly from the initial topic. This is not about interpretations of scripture but about the fundamental flaws in non-scientific approaches to understanding one’s environment.

There is insurmountable empirical evidence for evolution. There are admittedly grey areas in the evolution of species however in contrast to the weight of evidence already in existence, these are not considered to compromise the general theory.

However, There is very little (or none) empirical evidence supporting hypothesis on the origins of life itself, from either the evolutionist or creationist camps.

It is this grey area that allows the ‘debate’ to continue. Without a ‘proven’ explanation for the initial ’spark’ of life. Evolutionists have no right to completely disregard suggestions of the influence of a higher power / intelligence in the creation of life.

Equally absurd to me is the ridiculous evolutionists that deny indisputable empirical evidence for the mutation of dna and the theory of natural selection and insist on denying historical time lines for the development of life as we know it. Which even with current scientific measurement, is conservative at best.

Far too much energy is spent on defending a school of thought, be it evolutionist, IDist or creationist, rather than defending the true scientific process of discovery and comprehension. Discount all possibilities and what you are left with is most likely the truth.

I say ‘most likely’ because knowledge evolves. It is not created!

“My experience, in general, is that the idea of evolution is held on to as stubbornly as any other dogma, superstition, or religion, despite reams of facts and gross evidence contradicting it.”

So care to put forward your idea for how life evolved obviously I’ll be expecting some real evidence here and not just the theory of Evolution can’t explain this (well generally this does tend to mean it does but the evidence is ignored) so as to support your hypothesis whatever that may be?

for Creationists to demonstrate the absurdity of what you believe

That would be an excellent start. Yes. However, so far they have only gone on to assert that evolution is absurd, without ever coming close to demonstrating it.

If you are capable of making such a demonstration, then please feel free to do so, or to point me to where someone else has done so.

Nope. You misunderstand the Creationists argument about that and probably underestimate their intelligence. No matter how many changes happen the “kinds” are never bridged over. Each thing was designed/created to reproduce “after it’s own ‘kind.’” Therefore micro-evolution has it’s limits. One kind of animal can develop great variety, but never become another type of animal.

How do you define “kinds”? Are spiders the same “kind” as insects? Are dogs the same “kind” as bears?

Unless you can define what a “kind” is with rigour, this statement is meaningless. What if we declare that all animals, from earthworms to humans, are a single “kind” and could have evolved from a common ancestor? Would you have a problem with that?

Ed,

I respect that point of view. I believe you hold it sincerely. Obviously I disagree, and I don’t believe the alternative to a belief in macro-evolution is to be irrational. In fact I think a belief in evolution is irrational, but I believe you are an honorable person.
That being said, please try to refrain from implying, or inferring that those who disagree with you are less intelligent than you are. They very well may be, or they may be of superior intelligence, either way the inference adds nothing of value to your arguments.
If you need an example please check the first response you wrote to me, where you implied that my philosophical education was insufficient to understand the brilliance of your argument.

Ed,

Even one would suffice, yet there’s not one for which a compelling opposing case cannot be made.
You’ve made the Creationist’s case with and for them, for example, when you point out “species” (your error, not mine) of transitional whales. Or, perhaps you’ve missed their main salient points.
Read, or reread Michael Behe. I believe it was Dobzhansky who was quoted as advising someone not to debate Duane Gish on the fossil record because Gish “knows more about the fossil record than anyone else alive.” Of course Gish wrote the famous Creationist’s tome, “Evolution, The Fossils Say No.”
Incidentally, if it was T.D., I believe he believed largely the way you do. I am not putting down your beliefs, only urging you to consider what I believe are flaws in your logic, and to consider your tone when blogging with those who have sincerely held and well-reasoned disagreements with you.

Ed,

You’re precisely correct. At least that’s my understanding. I was surmising from your comments that you are also a devout Christian, yet an evolutionist. That’s why I wrote, “I believe he believed largely the way you do.”
As to the quote it was, as I recall, in a private letter either from Stephen J. Gould or T.D, that’s why I wrote, “I believe.” That’s my catchall for lazy, sloppy scholarship when I don’t want to chase the quote down. You don’t have to take my word for it, but the larger context of the point was that there does not exist an example for which an airtight case can be made. I dare say there are probably scant fewer former Creationists than there are Evolutionists for that, among many, reason(s).

So long as there are hundreds of atheists and agnostics who are practicing scientists who challenge the whole theory and, in many cases, say they’ve abandoned the construct as unusable, not to mention the hordes of Christian scientists who find it wholly uncompelling, I’d say we have anything but a unanimous jury finding.

I’m a little lost as to who passed this along, but thanks to whoever passed along the link on Glen Morton’s testimony. It was very good reading. I respect him. Of course all of that type of thing, just like my first paragraph above, proves nothing. It’s anecdotal, but not proof.

I’ve had a pretty serious interest in the subject for over 30 years and I really do not hold out hope that there will be true scientific consensus in my lifetime.

I think throwing everything out because of one obvious lie is an overreaction. There’s no reason why one couldn’t become a theistic evolutionist instead.

However, if it leads to sceptical study of the other elements of faith, and they are discarded on their own merits, then that’s another matter.

Of course, especially when you’re dealing with people who claim that without a god, there’s no reason not to murder and rape, having them abandon the faith is very bad indeed…

Ty,

I’ve done enough research to understand your use of the word “fact” in association with the theory. I assume you mean what most people mean, that while we haven’t worked out every precise mechanism we do know that it happens. I didn’t say I don’t read, just that I don’t claim to be a scientist.
My feeble IQ is still quite capable of carrying on coherent thought and conversation, even with you.
What I do not accept is your premise, however, that the jury is not still out. So long as there are hundreds of atheists and agnostics who are practicing scientists who challenge the whole theory and, in many cases, say they’ve abandoned the construct as unusable, not to mention the hordes of Christian scientists who find it wholly uncompelling, I’d say we have anything but a unanimous jury finding.

To everyone in this part of the thread: You all have Google right? Some of this must therefore be construed as willful ignorance. As for fulfilled prophecies and “Biblical redactors,” look up Historicity of Scripture and read practically any article by someone on the sane side of the issue. Since books of Antiquity were written by hand it would have been impossible to make wholesale changes.
We have fairly accurate dating for most parts of the Christian Bible.
Finally the word you read as “circle” is a translation from Hebrew that is more accurately referring to sphericity.

I think that covers everyone.

I’ve enjoyed a spirited discussion and I’ll be glad to chime in should you want me to answer anything else or further defend my positions.

Are there any atheists out there who would be willing to be polygraphed with the question being, “Do you believe in a personal God who created the world and everything in it?” I’ve made this challenge throughout the world, on several continents and have never had an atheist accept. I think they know at some deep level that they are at best (should be at worst I guess) agnostic and cannot pass this test.

Transitional between what?

Yes, between odontocetes and mysticetes.

Is it a type of whale or isn’t it?

Yes, it’s a whale, one that shows signs of developing from one type of whale to another.

It’s not evidence of a transitional form, so much as evidence that another whale like creature used to live which is now probably (though not certainly) extinct.

It’s certainly evidence that a whale-like animal existed. There’s plenty of evidence that baleen whales are descended from it, though. Which makes it a transitional form.

As to Gish’s reputation, what I do not find are compelling arguments that refute his theses.

Really? Well, here you go.

If you prefer your reading in dead-tree format, I can heartily recommend Evolution: What the fossils say and why it matters by Prothero. I strongly recommend you read it, if you want some compelling proof of a dozen transitional sequences from rotifers to hominids.

I’m not particularly impressed when people from one side of this debate engage in thinly veiled ad hominem attacks on the other side.

You raised the issue of Gish as an expert. I merely pointed out that he is no such thing. This is not an ad hominem, as it does not rely on some unrelated quality that Gish has.

That being said, I find your knowledge to be far more exhaustive on this subject than my own. I am by no stretch of the imagination a scientist, nor do I play one on TV, but I am smart enough to know that the jury is still out, and historically speaking, true science is rarely decided by mob or majority rule.

No, the jury has not been out for a hundred and fifty years. The fact that evolution by natural selection happens is not in any debate in scientific circles, any more than the theory of gravity is in debate. There is some debate over specific details and sub-theories, but nothing that will change the shape of evolutionary theory as the layman understands it.

You are correct that science is not decided by “mob rule”; it is decided by consensus of the scientists in the appropriate field. The consensus may be wrong, but it take strong evidence to make that case. In this case, the consensus is stronger than in almost any other area of science; you’re more likely to find a physicist who disagrees with the broad strokes of relativity than a biologist who disagrees with the broad strokes of evolution.

The evidence for evolution rests on almost every other science we know, from atomic physics to chemistry to information theory. For evolution to be false, almost everything we know about the world would also need to be false. In addition, evolutionary theory has made numerous precise, testable predictions about past and present biodiversity, and contributed a huge amount to medical science and climatology, as well as numerous other fields. There is literally an unimaginable amount of evidence for evolution, and any challenge to it will need to be at least as good an explanation for all this data as evolution is. No such explanation has ever been provided.

@Jeff

If you could just produce a living Christ, I would not expect an atheist on the planet to deny him.

Until then, you’re going to be stuck defending an imaginary friend. That is just the way it is…

Ha ha. That’s good.

My friend is powerful enough He doesn’t require defense by puny little ol’ me, nor does He feel compelled to respond to your need for proof beyond what He’s already provided.

Look up! Explain prophecy, intricate and detailed hundreds of years before it happened. Explain the wonder, perfection and majesty of Scripture, the many documented examples of miraculous intervention in the affairs of men. Explain Scripture proclaiming the earth is a sphere, or that it’s “suspended in the heavens upon nothing.”

Finally, explain to me why hundreds of millions of people with personal experience do not trump people, no matter how intelligent, with arguments.

He’s real. He lives. We will all stand before Him and give an account for how we included or excluded Him from our lives.

“So long as there are hundreds of atheists and agnostics who are practicing scientists who challenge the whole theory and, in many cases, say they’ve abandoned the construct as unusable,”

You have sources to present?

Jeff, if you want us to explain prophecy, please show us some prophecies that have been written and fulfilled, and proof that they have been made before the event happened. We’re happy to consider them as long as they are very specific, clearly fulfilled, and that there is proof they were written before the events happened.

@Reckoner…

You are fond of asking that question in a sort of “trump card” fashion in your attempts to trip up believers. You think its clever but what you dont understand about the crucifixion/resurrection is…anything, so you ask amiss with all due respect. I think you picked that up from some highminded fool or his God bashing book.

So let me ask you what this means…then we can follow up with your question in a more meaningful way:

“The wrath of God will consume what we call ourselves, so that the real self God made shall appear” George MacDonald

Wanna play?

Oh come on you DO have Google right?

Indeed. And I don’t mean people saying evolution isn’t true. I mean peer reviewed published research saying it isn’t true.

I can find a nutcase to support nearly any crackpot position. That doesn’t make it legitimate.

Regarding your polygraph test, which you somehow seem to be serious — I bet most of the readers here would gladly take your stupid polygraph test asking if they believe there is a god. I would if you would would fly to my place and pay me some $ for the trouble of humoring you.

The reason we are atheists is because we don’t believe there is a god. Why the hell would be be lying about it? Sounds like something that nutjob Ray Comfort would say.

If deep down we thought a personal God existed, we’d be theists. Not atheists.

If there was evidence for a god, I’d believe. If there was evidence for an invisible pink unicorn, I’d believe. If there was evidence for a invisible teapot orbiting Saturn, I’d believe.

Or perhaps you think that deep down, we believe in the Invisible Pink Unicorn, too?

You’ve obviously been making your challenge to the wrong people. If someone was agnostic, then they could still answer your question “no” and be honest, otherwise they’d be theists, not agnostics.

Perhaps you could set one up, hire a trained polygrappher, agree to some base rules, and I could get the word out to have local atheists in your area take you up on your challenge. You’d have to put up something to lose — like donating $10,000 to a charity of our choice — for us to humor you, but I’m sure there would be hundreds of people willing to take your silly little test and get you to stop thinking such ridiculous things. Well, at least that one specific ridiculous thing.

Okay, to assert that ID’s and Creationists are not working biologists is ignorant, or a lie

Some of the most notable are Michael Denton, Molecular Biologist, Walter L. Bradley, Biologist, Allen Gillen, to name a few, or the numerous people interviewed in the Ben Stein movie, all of which I’m sure you disagree with as violently as you do me, but probably none of which you are academically more qualified then. That doesn’t make them right, but to pretend they don’t exist is silly. There are hundreds of biologists who are members, in America, of the various Creationism groups, and if you add believers in ID and others just unconvinced by evolution, but without a satisfactory counter construct.

This is a silly and fruitless conversation. You’re big enough to at least concede that not every scientist agrees with you. Aren’t you? If this was a court of law a smart attorney would have stipulated to that just to save time.

Oh, you didn’t just cite the Ben Stein movie as a source for factual integrity?

Michael Denton has changed his views in the last few years. He now considers evolution to be self-evident and no longer associates with the Discovery Institute. Read his book Nature’s Destiny for more details.

According to his bio on the Discovery Institute’s site, Walter Bradley’s education is in materials science, and not in a biological discipline.

I assume the Allen Gillen you mention is this guy, who did some undergraduate work in biology, but his doctorate is in education and not in science. He is certainly not working as a biologist, though he does seem to have previously done some work in the field, I’ll grant you that.

Are these supposed to be representative of the “hundreds” of working biologists who deny evolution? One who accepts evolution and two who are not biologists?

“He chose to take on human form as a completely selfless demonstration of His love for us. His nature is other than ours, and thus not totally comprehendible by us, but He did not sacrifice Himself to Himself, and to say so is an overly simplistic understanding of a pretty complex theological subject (the trinity). He illuminated the law, illustrated the law, and even enunciated it, but your question seems to imply that He could have simply chosen to ignore His utter holiness, violate his own nature and choose to redeem us without a blood sacrifice. This he could not do and to do so would have made our lives, and their redemption, worthless.”

And when Gandalf the Gray died upon the side of the mountain after his long battle with the Balrog, the Valar returned him to Middle Earth, and granted him the mantle of White, having stripped this honor from Saruman for his many evil acts, because Gandalf’s work in Middle Earth was not yet complete.

I mean, it has exactly as much evidence to support it as your assertions above.

@Reckoner…

I ran out of “reply” spaces…so we’re down here now.

It’s like this Reck…we assume we are the person/identity that we are born with, that we are given at birth, etc. that born identity is strengthened by society as we age. The truth of the “new birth” offer (John 3:3) provides for a new (spiritual) identity that is more of a restoration to the original, paradaisical condition. This is a mystery to the natural man because the Edenic state is now so faint in his memory, although when he is loved, feels joy he is re-visiting his original Life prior to the disruption.

So man is born once, naturally and then again spiritually. But of course this second birth can not be seen in the natural realm so it is ridiculed as fallacy, foolishness. But God is not a man that He should lie.

Now consider Abraham…a sojourner in time like us, a foreigner, a “heathen” not knowing God. But God says to him…leave your Fathers house (who you think you are) and follow me to a land (life) that I will show you. This is a type of spiritual rebirth, a journey of faith in the spirit.

The quote I referenced earlier has nothing to do with “heaven”. Btw…the word “heaven” translated means lifted up, elevated, happiness, eternity, power. Now consider this in light of Christ saying the kingdom of Heaven is here and now. Did you hear that or did you just read it? Is it possible that you could be missing something beautiful?

In the beginning we were made in His image and likeness. Sin (death, division) marred us, the image of His beloved son. Man had so devolved that he had forgotten who he really was, had lost his sense of paternity so Christ came to remind us who we really are and who Daddy is.

There is so much more to the true story and offer than what “religion” has shown. So no disrespect, but that trump card question is not truly relevent, is not an accurate description of either motive or process. Things will not make sense in the natural realm for they are spiritually discerned.

Your earlier post about me being “drunk” is correct. But not on faith, I am “filled” with the spirit to overflowing. The living waters are gushing forth!! The kingdom of heaven is not meat & drink (tangible matters) but righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit!

Wanna drink of this ale? No hangovers, it never runs out and He saves the best wine for last!!

There is more, there is a Life.

…… But of course this second birth can not be seen in the natural realm so it is ridiculed as fallacy, foolishness. But God is not a man that He should lie. ……

mark….. if what you say is true then how do you explain this.

Ezekiel 14:9
And if a prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I the Lord have deceived that prophet.

http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/god_lie.html

also how do you explain all of the instances where god is either decieving people or putting lying spirits inside of them.

Mr. Florien,

No, that’s my own challenge, and here’s the theory I’m operating under. The Scripture says, “The fool has said in his heart, there is no God.” I’m wondering if the polygraph can reveal subconscious truth of a nature atheists don’t usually admit even to themselves.
I’m not wealthy enough to get cash together for your favorite charity. I understand the distinctions between atheists and agnostics, but I wonder if either could answer this question “no” with their lips without the needles indicating that they know otherwise. I think deep down atheists believe that if they’ve bet wrong that no “God worth the title” could punish them for it, because He didn’t provide sufficient evidence and that would be unfair.
I think it’s the ultimate foolishness to suppose God won’t keep His word, and besides, if you can’t fool a polygraph you’re not fooling God.

That may sound like Ray Comfort but it’s all me.

So, if there was clear evidence that dogs and bears both evolved from a common ancestor, you’d happily say that they are both simply members of the dog-bear kind and no “real” evolution happened?

How do you define a “kind”? If you can’t define a “kind” how can you possibly know that evolution can’t possibly advance beyond that line? There should be obvious markers that make this evolution impossible, right?

My preachers never talked about this at all. I don’t think very many preachers fancy themselves to be scientists. Again the Ben Stein movie points out a glaring error in the reasoning about only accepting people who are published in peer reviewed journals. Such journals are controlled by the mainstream and are as intolerant of dissension as you are.

I didn’t put the quote date because I didn’t know it.

The reason I am a Creationists is that I personally believe that the facts can be interpreted in that framework, and nothing I’ve been shown has demonstrated otherwise.

I’ve also not seen any data or rational thought that critiques the arguments Stein makes. On the contrary, they attack the messenger and make issues of non-issues.

The evolution emperor has no clothes, and all of the posturing and chest beating doesn’t clothe him.

The reason over half of the UK doesn’t believe in evolution is not all ignorance, in fact, since it’s the only view that dominates the airwaves, the view most people are unaware of is that of the Creationists.

I myself, although I grew up in church, was a believer in evolution, thinking Creationists were all miserably uninformed.

Evolution is anything but obvious. If God created using evolution why did He deceive us and hide it so well?

I myself, although I grew up in church, was a believer in evolution, thinking Creationists were all miserably uninformed.

One problem: Evolution is not faith. A “believer” in evolution is probably equally ill-informed about it as a disbeliever. Evolution is part of science, which asks that a person bring skepticism to the study. It’s not an issue for believing, but a simple exercise in weighing the evidence — most of which you appear to be completely unaware of.

I’ll wager you’ve never studied evolution seriously. I’ll wager you can’t tell us in simple terms what evolution theory claims (obvious from your insistence that it include abiogenesis), and I’ll wager you can’t accurately tell us how evolution works.

I met with an old friend at the highest levels of medical research over the weekend, and he expressed great weariness with shenanigans at the Texas state school board over evolution in the curriculum. Between us we quickly thought of a half-dozen great research projects that have fled Texas, because they need a continuing stream of workers who are science-educated and who understand evolution. He said that health care research, especially for cancer, now require intimate and thorough knowledge of evolution’s mechanisms, and how they work at the cellular level especially in a larger, multicelled organism.

We’re to the point that ignorance of evolution threatens our jobs and health care. Simpson was right when he wrote that “100 years without Darwin is enough.” But he wrote that in 1959.

Jeff, go thou and stop sinning.

It has its merits and flaws. It’s harder to find new posts (especially after they’ve dropped off the sidebar), but it’s a lot easier to track specific discussions.

I think I like it more than I dislike it, overall.

Wintermute,

Very good points, especially the material I had not previously read, which brought into question the veracity of some of the claims made in the “Expelled” movie. Without further research I’m not prepared to concede particular points, but I can certainly see this discussion with a more accurate appreciation of your perspective.

Still, as I probably do from my vantage point, I believe you continue to suffer from wearing the evolutionary blinders. It was and is the simple fact that the evidence (in my opinion), data, and observation more closely fit the creation model that led me, kicking and screaming, into that camp. That’s why I made, and stand by, the statement about God hiding the evidence for evolution.

That’s also one of many reasons evolutionists rarely win debates in this (USA), or any country, when the winner is decided by an audience poll. It just seems, from simple observation, that the weight of the evidence falls on the Creationists side of the scales.

I’m the first to admit that that doesn’t constitute proof, but it also makes me question what would? If you’ve actually studied both sides but still (from my point of view) “cannot see the forest for the trees”, what possible fruit can this thread yield?

I’m sure I’ve left some of your points unchallenged, as you have mine, but this tit for tat leads nowhere. Both of us are verbally strong, and intellectually robust enough to continue this nonsense, but to what end?

The important thing, from my perspective, gets lost in the din. Jesus is Who He says He is. He effects lasting, miraculous life change today. Sin is the real and terrible barrier between mankind and our Creator. These are not theories I have, but unassailable experiential Truth. There is also substantial proof of the legal/historical nature, and no I do not feel compelled to provide it in this forum. I have ample proof that it will be debated strongly and argued incessantly, but perhaps never truly considered. That’s a shame, because acceptance of Christ is the only thing that changes someone from within.

He loves you, died for you, and wants to give you His life, meaning, purpose, direction and liberty.

And Ed, I did check out those sources. Sorry if my ignorance caused you exasperation. There are a great many things which everyone in this discussion has demonstrated ignorance about. You appear to not fully appreciate (perhaps comprehend) the difference between assertions and proof, but then, neither do I at times. We both have blinders on. Even if evolution was universally accepted, and had been around 500 years, my interpretation of the data, as it now stands, would still be that it’s an inferior construct to Creationism.

I think what bothers people most are that there are sincere, thinking people who HAVE considered the evidence, who do not share your opinion.

We will all stand before the living God someday. By comparison, this question probably won’t even matter when we do, but my suspicion is that none of us have it all figured out.

Science: Research, observation of real world processes, measurement, test, changing theories based on continued measurement.
*cough* verification and measurement *cough*

Religion:

By the way, it’s all about Jesus. He’s the only thing that’s permanent about any of this.

*cough* belief only, zero verification *cough*

Science: Upheld!
Religion: Overruled!

Notice Christians are no longer saying:
“Geocentrism vs. Heliocentrism: Teach the Controversy”

Points are evidentally being addressed “a la carte”, so…..

Jeff: “It just seems, from simple observation, that the weight of the evidence falls on the Creationists side of the scales.”

Knocking holes in evolution, and/or, biology (or, I should say, attempting to do so) does not create nor constitute “evidence” for “Creationists”. Again; non-sequitur/false dilemma. “Creationism” – either by Yahweh & Co, or some other supernatural being – is not the default alternative to Evolution by Natural Selection(which doesn’t even seek to explain the origins of life in the first place). And furthermore, if I recall correctly, you are not anti-evolution, so it’s a moot point, I would think. So, that leaves us…

Where, then, is this *evidence* that all life(whether it evolved, or still its original “kind”) was “Created” by an invisible, conscious being? When/if that evidence is put forth, where is the evidence that this creator is none other than the Christian biblegod?

*Also, can anyone tell me/us *how* biblegod created everything? If not, then you ultimately don’t have a theory, nor explanation, as saying “God did it!” is the equivalent of saying, “I don’t know!”.

Continues….”[biblegod] loves you..”

Fine. Just as soon as this alleged being makes this known to me, itself…..*note—not via you, your neighbor, songs, your church, or ancient manuscripts—then I’ll have to reevaluate my position. Until then, I only see/hear other human beings insisting that it is so.

Closely related— I would still like to know why biblegod presumably had no issues with simply appearing in physical form…. you know, as he supposedly did, frequently, just a few thousand years ago? Again, these appearances hurt no one’s “faith”, nor their “free will”, one iota. I wouldn’t think this a problem at all, for a being who’s supposedly right in our very midst this second, and who’s so concerned about saving “the lost”. Right?

Continues….”[biblegod]died for you….”

So, when/if Christians proclaim, “JESUS LIVES!!!”…what?..they are lying, then?

Continues….”and [biblegod]wants to give you His life, meaning, purpose, direction and liberty.”

RE: “His life”

No, according to doctrine, what “He” wants (and *requires*), first and foremost, is my belief. Otherwise, this supposed “debt” (that I didn’t even incur) would be paid in full.

RE: “meaning/purpose”

Meaning and purpose come from within; they cannot be given away.

RE: “direction”

No one gets their “direction” from “the body of Christ”. Moreover, the supposed “direction” found in the bible is ultimately dependent on *us* to interpret any given situation, and act accordingly. Is “thou shalt not kill” absolute? No, of course not. It is evidentally up to human beings to interpret the circumstances, and act accordingly. It’s silly to ask “WWJD?”….because obviously, “Jesus” might kill; he might not. Thus, there is a human standard higher than the “direction” of “God”.

RE: “liberty”

Excuse me……’whAT? You cannot be serious! Yes, I’m “free” to do what I wish, so long as I don’t mind being incinerated for eternity for not accepting the Christian philosophy as “Truth”, on faith.(which, at this point, would require me to lie to myself)

boomSLANG i am an avid believer in creationism but i gotta tell ya… some of your points are just belligerent.

God only appeared in physical form to one person after man was banished from Eden, and thats Moses, and God had to shield Moses’ eyes until he had passed, and then he was allowed to view his back.

RE: So, when/if Christians proclaim, “JESUS LIVES!!!”…what?..they are lying, then?

Have you ever even heard of Christianity? The point was that Christ was obedient to God’s will unto death and by his death He himself was the perfect sacrifice to god. Because Jesus had died so pure, he had conquered Death and opened the gates of heaven so that we all might be able to live there.

RE:RE:life

this is only the belief of certain Christians with whom i do not agree. What the Bible teaches us is that by being a good person and loving your neighbor as yourself, you by default believe in God and righteousness, even if you don’t know it.

RE:RE: meaning and purpose

Doesn’t prayer reside within us? Meaning and purpose are discovered within, but who is to say that God is an outside force, and not part of us?

RE:RE: direction

This comment isn’t even logical. You just proved him right with what you are saying, because to ask WWJD, when perhaps breaking a commandment is necessary (which i can’t think of an instance when it would be. why would it ever be necessary to take the life of another), because Jesus is a more holy, godly version of ourself, who through our choice, we are aspiring to be. So asking WWJD is by definition using Christianity to give “direction” to your life.

RE:RE: liberty

True we may be enslaved here on Earth, but that is by Sin, not by God. And God does not say that “if you fuck up, you gon’ burn bitch.” The point is that you live the best life possible, and be the best person you can, and THEN, you are FREE from Death, and can live eternally FREE from the bondage of sin which drags us ever downward into a loveless hell hole.

Biatch.

P.S: I am only slightly Christian, and I have nearly no faith in a higher power, but you should probably know a little bit about Christianity before you go and make yourself look dumb….