God

>>Nearly oblivious not utterly oblivious, in several places god says like father like son.

Yes but evolution is son NOT like father. The bible is most definately anti evolution (or it was when I studied it as a strict Methodist, 1hr per day plus chapel.)


Why does there have to be an afterlife to give our current existance meaning or motivation to be a good upstanding citizen?

I beleive I will live for the here and now. You can live for when you are dead but that is your choice.

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."

Galileo Galilei

Yes but evolution is son NOT like father.

All I'm saying is that in several places the bible mentions
the resemblence of a father to his son. The actual
mechanism to this is never discussed. Physical traits
are inherited; this is one of the principles of evolution.

Why does there have to be an afterlife to give our current existance meaning or motivation to be a good upstanding citizen?

There must be some definition of what good means. Saying
that we just know what good is, that we inherited knowing
what good is from are parents or that we were told
what is good all seem insufficient to mean.

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."

I don't think religion is supposed to be something where
you blindly believe in something. Nither do I think
that is what faith is.

>1. Just as no scientist doubts the existence of gravity, so very few scientists doubt that evolution has occurred. Thus, they acknowledge the fact of evolution. The theory of evolution, on the other hand, details the attempts of science to find out exactly how evolution works. It is here that the dynamics of science come into play. Although the broad outlines of the theory are well understood, and well supported by evidence, the details, such as the tempo and mechanism of evolution are still the subject of debate. Thus your argument that its called a theory is skewed.<

1. The evidence is highly lacking and what is available was interpertated to support evolution.

>2. We actually do have many fossils that show fish as fish, then fish with fins that loosely resemble feet, then fish with almost feet, then fish/frog combinations that still have fish tails, then gradually getting smaller tails, then the combination with teeth, then etc etc to full fledged frogs and other amphibians. Many fossils have been found for other animals/plants that do similar thinkgs over a period of years, including primitive man to modern man.<

We have fossils of species A, fossils of species B, fossils of species C. Speicies A lived for a period of time, then dissapers, then Speices B shows up and lives for a period of time, then it dissapears

>3. We can watch bacteria evolve due to the extremely quick reproductive rate. The fact that strands across the world can quickly become immune to antibiotics, AND genetics can simulate this effect in a lab, shows evolution right in front our eyes.<
I have a better example Dogs, look at all the breeds this is evolution right? Slight problem species have not changed.

>4. Humans and primates have a shared genetical mutation that no other animals have, a gene that makes it impossible for our bodies to synthesize Vitamin C. No other explanation except that we have a common ancestor.<

Or the Cookie Cutter theroy.

>5. Not directly related to evolution, but the concept of time stemming from radioactive dating show that not only is the world much older than the bible says, BUT also dating of human fossils take human existance MUCH farther back than if you add up the lifespans from everone from Adam and Eve to Jesus.<

Radioctive dating is higly flawed, second Using newly calculated mitochondrial DNA mutation rate, scientists are able to back date the beginnings of the human species. New data indicates there was an "Eve gene," a common mother who was ancestral to all humans, who lived a mere 6,000 years ago!.

>EVERY religion has people willing to die for what they believe. The people a couple of years who were in that cult in San Diego were willing to die because they believed a spaceship would take them to the star Sirius. Does this mean their religion is true?<

Your missing my point entirly first of those people commited sucide, second after they all did who else wants to join? Yet Christinity is two thousand years old and people still convert even though it risk there lives.

>Besides, you are still missing my point. My point is that people in these countries have no realistic chance of being christian and I think it VERY unfair if god judges them on this. Answer this question, if you were born in Thailand where 99% of the people around you are Buddhist, your family is Buddhist, and it is greatly looked down upon for anyone to offend anyone, ESPECIALLY your family, and you hear very little about christianity, do you honestly think you'd be a christian right now instead of Buddhist?? Answer that question! If god sends you to hell for this, its kinda like him saying after you die "Well, I'm sorry, but remember those people who commited suicide out in San Diego? Well they were correct. Geez, I know you had a great life and all, and were truly sorry for your sins, but you had your fair chance to believe exactly what they believed! Well, off to hell with ya!" <

Mark 13:13 - Everyone will hate you because of me.
Mathhew 10:21 Brother will deliver brother over to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death

>Hah, just in time.
I missed you to.

>It benefits us to cooperate; to live as a society, i did not build the house i'm living in nor forage for the food i eat at night.

As such is it is beneficial for us to impose social rules on each other to protect society (which benefits us): the law. Morality is evolutionary law, it evovled to increase cooperation, probably in tandem with mans increase in brain size/spinal cord.<

Does one pack of animals send aid to another pack if it's in trouble?

>There have been many many religions during the past 10,000 years, there will probably be a few to come, all have easy to see social and anthropic (is that a word?) roots. All share a common ingredient: IRRATIONAL belief, (that is the belief in something WITHOUT evidence, nor reasoning aka "faith") that is handed to generation to generation.

I cannot 'prove' an irrational belief wrong; i can't prove that a giant bull is not about to materialise three inches above my head and gore me to death on the other hand, i can prove its so unlikely that it isn't even worth considering........ God isn't worth considering.<

You have yet to prove that God is unlikely.

>f evolution says animal A became animal B, they'll say, wheres the in between animal? So animal C is found in the middle, then it becomes, wheres the animal betwen A and C? Animal D found, now what about between A and D, etc etc never ending.

Whats annoying is that this argument would be considered wrong in every other setting, yet creationists find that its valid here. We have proof that the oceans were higher and covered more of the earth in the ancient past, and we know that they don't now, but have no proof of inbetween. Isn't it dumb to make the claim that they possibly jumped? When we find a new achaelogical dig where the only two weapons remaining are a crude spear and a sophisticated crossbow, isn't it dumb to say that possibly they suddenly figured out the crossbow instead of gradually working up to it? Thousands of years from now if when they are digging our remains up they come across 3 computers, one from the 70's, one from the 80's, and one from today, how dumb would the scientist who claims that it's possible our knowledge of computers jumped as opposed to us gradually learning new technology sound??

But yet to say that species JUMPED from one type to another is supposed to be sane?? It defies all common sense! Is finding EVERY single fossil ever created the only way to proove this?<

There are litterly thousands of years witch have no fossil evidence not a reltivly short period of time. Second there are also periods of millions of years that the animal did not change at all.

I know this one's focus isn't really God vs. no God, but when the debate turns into that it's essentially this:

Believer: "I beleive God is real. I don't need physical proof. I have faith."

Non-believer: "You're irrational for believing in something without proof."

Beleiver: "Okay."

Both sides have given very good points in this debate (IMO), and obviously the demonstrative conversation was a general one, but a lot of times that's basically what the debate boils down to.

Sometimes it's the opposite way around with the believers calling the non-beleivers irrational. Other times it's both.

Either way it's amusing to watch...

Edit: I'm not referring to anyone in particular with this post. (Read: [insert statement to cover my ass.])

I'm still not sure I'm going to get into this one (I got bored of this)... But I'll throw a few eggs anyhow.

>>This life is a punishment.

Whoa, buddy! Its not a very damn good punishment. Guess I'm a masochist 'cuz I seem to be enjoying this.

>>So in all your non-beleivers cases, life sucks, then you die and that's it.

I believe you're looking for the phrase; "Lifes a *****, and then you die." Its 1/2 untrue (the lifes a ***** part), but you've nailed the rest.

>>So which will you stick by, the non-religious principles you've spent the last 5-15 years developing that
>>hold no promise, or the faith in a god who offers redemption and eternal joy???

Oh, oh! How about I'll stick by reason and logic. Yup, I think I will. If publishers clearing house offers me $1,000,000 (and they have), do I take them up on it because it sound good? Obviously not. I'm no sucker. I might want it, but thats not going to make me dumb enough to fall for it.

>>Either way it's amusing to watch...

Ya, I used to think so. Now I'm simultaniously bored and irritated. I dont like that combination. Yet, like a sore tooth, I keep coming back to play with it. Perhaps this has to do with my masochistic joy of punishment we discovered earlier.

Sentaku senshi,

1. The evidence is highly lacking and what is available was interpertated to support evolution.

I think you got things mixed up here. The evidence is not highly lacking, and evolution came about because of the evidence, not the other way around. Whereas, creationism's evidence is nearly non-existent, and the very little evidence for it came about to support creationism.

We have fossils of species A, fossils of species B, fossils of species C. Speicies A lived for a period of time, then dissapers, then Speices B shows up and lives for a period of time, then it dissapears

How does Species B just suddenly show up? I thought that the earth was created in six days? The reason why Species B came about is because of evolution. Species B evolved from another species.

Or the Cookie Cutter theroy.

Care to explain what that is?

New data indicates there was an "Eve gene," a common mother who was ancestral to all humans, who lived a mere 6,000 years ago!.

Even if that were true wouldn't that still go against the Bible? What year was it that the Bible said the world began? And how did so much happen in so little time? We had an ice-age, mountains changed shape, Noah had his little adventure with his ark, dinasours roamed the earth while appearantly humans existed at the sametime, something happened inbetween all of this that made the dinasours disappear, mountains changed shape, the Egyptians made their pyramids, and many other things (none of this in chronological order). How did all of that happen in such little time according to the year the Bible says the earth was created?

Does one pack of animals send aid to another pack if it's in trouble?

No, but since when do humans have the same intelligence level as a pack of animals? Also, how does this relate to what Clyde said?

Mark 13:13 - Everyone will hate you because of me.
Mathhew 10:21 Brother will deliver brother over to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death

Again, how does this relate to anything of what PJYelton wrote?

You have yet to prove that God is unlikely.

Do you have any sort of argument that God is likely besides the faith you have towards him being true? Lets put it this way, if somebody has never been introduce to any sort of religion how could you make him believe that God is true? There must be more than faith, right?

There are litterly thousands of years witch have no fossil evidence not a reltivly short period of time. Second there are also periods of millions of years that the animal did not change at all.

Species evolve to help them fit their surroundings better. A specie may not need to evolve over a long period of time because there was no need for evolving over that time. About not being able to find fossils over a time period, it's not exactly easy to find fossils that existed over millions of years ago. You can't just go for a walk one day and find a two million year old fossil aying on the side of the road lol

Waldo2k2,

I believe that not believing in god or denying the fact that one exists or tryign to say that their life proves their is no god...are just too weak to trust and believe in something that they cannot physically proves exists.

Like l@d said, I choose to use logic and reason or make believe feelings. I may not believe in God but that doesn't take anything away from me. How exactly am I different from you if I don't believe in God? How does that make me less of a person? I don't think any less of you because you do believe in God. I guess some people are too shallow and ignorant to understand this.

Faith is a powerful thing, it can lead men to many things...so i ask you, if you have no faith where are you being led to?

My faith isn't in God. My faith is in myself. I'm taking myself where I want to go. My path may very well wind up being better than yours or my path may not lead me to the same success as yours. But one things for sure, me not believing in God isn't going to lead me to a less succesful path.

Are you just too lazy to believe in a god? Do you not like church?

I don't believe in God, because I choose not to believe in God. [sarcasm] Yeah, I love my church. All of the atheists in the city gather on Saturday nights (we like to keep the church people up all night so that they're tired when they have to go to they're happy church in the morning) and we perform satanic rituals. Usually we start off by burning a couple Bibles and maybe a few pictures of Jesus; this is all to get the mood and feeling right. After that we got out and make a lot of noise; this is where we keep up all the "other" church people. One time we saw this nice old man walking on the side of the road and we knocked him over for the fun of it. We said "hey, we're going to hell either way; we might as well have some "real" fun in the meantime". I mean, man, it's crazy some of the things we do. So yeah I love to go to church. [/sarcasm]

Honestly does it hurt to believe in something waiting for you when you die, is an eternity of utter nothingness (as opposed to heaven) enough of a comfort to justify your unwillingness to believe?

[sarcasm] Yeah, it does hurt a little bit. I just wish some great Christian man would come around and convert me back to normal. I know I said above that it's a lot of fun being atheist, but I really want to be like everyone else---a good, honest, decent Christian man.[/sarcasm] No, it doesn't hurt at all. What kind of question is that anyways? I don't believe that I'm going to feel anything when I die. I will be dead and nothing will be there to affect me, because I will be non-existent except to others who still live. When I die I'll feel as much as a dead flower. We are all organisms. Regardless that our species (collection of organims) is smarter than any other species I don't believe that this is going to give us eternal happiness when we die. We die like any other species, and we stay dead like any other species. None of this makes my life any less significant, because I feel that everyone is in the same situation as me----to live life to the fullest and not worry about the fight for survival against biology.

Why is it that you think there is no god?

I find it to be completely illogical to believe in a make-believe character. If you don't feel the same way, then that's your choice.

Just because you don't get everything you want now doesn't mean jack, this life is not completely for you enjoyment.

In a general sense I get what I want. You're right this life, nor any life. doesn't mean the least bit when you look at the large picture. However. to me this life does mean something, and other people's lives mean something to me, too.

Read the bible and it will make sense, God cast adam and eve out because of their sin.

Why do you want me to read the Bible? I don't care if you read the Bible or not. Yet you care so much that I read the Bible. Hmmm...

This life is a punishment. So in all your non-beleivers cases, life sucks, then you die and that's it.

According to my beliefs you're the one who is screwed lol. You're living a life that you think sucks to wait for an afterl-ife that is never going to come for you. What you ought to do is at least believe that this life can be enjoyable, too. Then from there see if you get that big ol' happy after-life. That's my opinion.

So which will you stick by, the non-religious principles you've spent the last 5-15 years developing that hold no promise, or the faith in a god who offers redemption and eternal joy???

[sarcasm] So you're saying there's still another chance for me?[/sarcasm] I'm happy with who I am and what I believe, thank you.

Hillbillie,

I'm not referring to anyone in particular with this post.

I think we all know who you were referring to, but I promise I won't mention any names.

EDIT: That post was long!!!

I read that gay scientists have just isolated the Christian gene.

42

You are all fools! Spiritual enlightenment only cost me $800,000 and now I can levitate ashtrays!

Once upon a time (75 million years ago to be more precise) there was an alien galactic ruler named Xenu. Xenu was in charge of all the planets in this part of the galaxy including our own planet Earth, except in those days it was called Teegeeack.

Now Xenu had a problem. All of the 76 planets he controlled were overpopulated. Each planet had on average 178 billion people. He wanted to get rid of all the overpopulation so he had a plan.

Xenu took over complete control with the help of renegades to defeat the good people and the Loyal Officers. Then with the help of psychiatrists he called in billions of people for income tax inspections where they were instead given injections of alcohol and glycol mixed to paralyse them. Then they were put into space planes that looked exactly like DC8s (except they had rocket motors instead of propellers).

These DC8 space planes then flew to planet Earth where the paralysed people were stacked around the bases of volcanoes in their hundreds of billions. When they had finished stacking them around then H-bombs were lowered into the volcanoes. Xenu then detonated all the H-bombs at the same time and everyone was killed.

The story doesn't end there though. Since everyone has a soul (called a "thetan" in this story) then you have to trick souls into not coming back again. So while the hundreds of billions of souls were being blown around by the nuclear winds he had special electronic traps that caught all the souls in electronic beams (the electronic beams were sticky like fly-paper).

After he had captured all these souls he had them packed into boxes and taken to a few huge cinemas. There all the souls had to spend days watching special 3D motion pictures that told them what life should be like and many confusing things. In this film they were shown false pictures and told they were God, The Devil and Christ. In the story this process is called "implanting".

When the films ended and the souls left the cinema these souls started to stick together because since they had all seen the same film they thought they were the same people. They clustered in groups of a few thousand. Now because there were only a few living bodies left they stayed as clusters and inhabited these bodies.

As for Xenu, the Loyal Officers finally overthrew him and they locked him away in a mountain on one of the planets. He is kept in by a force-field powered by an eternal battery and Xemu is still alive today.

well i think some of the things i said were taken a little to seriously, some rhetorical questions were answered so
I'm going to pull out of this one. I apologize to anyone i may have offended in the process (i think i may have been venting a little that night, ti's been a hectic week). So you all have fun.

"Radioctive dating is higly flawed"

.... no...... its........ not. Atleast not according to the worlds scientists.

Yes some ultra religious nuts went out looking for ways they could make it look suspect and yes every single one of their nonsensical points was demolished by REAL SCIENTISTS.

"second Using newly calculated mitochondrial DNA mutation rate, scientists are able to back date the beginnings of the human species. New data indicates there was an "Eve gene," a common mother who was ancestral to all humans, who lived a mere 6,000 years ago!."

N-O-N-S-E-N-S-E, using the rate of mitochondrial DNA mutation we can track lineages back, and it predicts that homosapiens were around 150-200,000 years ago.

Mitochondial EVE is the "common mother" who was ancestral not only to all humans but to all eukaryotic cells, and she was around a long LONG time before humans.

"Sometimes it's the opposite way around with the believers calling the non-beleivers irrational. Other times it's both"

Believers generally don't call non-believers irrational because they know they don't have a leg to stand on in terms of a rational argument that is why they continually bring out the "faith" argument.

Anyhow there is no question, religious belief IS irrational, for it to be rational there would have to be clear evidence or derived theory supporting it of which there is neither.

"Nearly oblivious not utterly oblivious, in several places god says like father like son"

Oh right that MUST be a reference to evolutionary theory then, because its not like people would have noticed that children resemble their parents without darwinian theory or anything.

"If you believe that the only principle of your existance
is evolution. Your only here to die and so is everyone else."

I love this argument, its like: If this were true I wouldn't like it, therefore it can't be true......... errrrm

Mommy mommy my teddy bear MUST be alive because i WANT him to be!!

Anyhow thats by-the-by since the lack of god in no way means that we're " here 'to' die".

"I'm not a robot, your not a robot and god didn't create us
to be robots. "

First define what you mean by "robot" then explain the reasoning that makes you conclude you are not one. (Hint:The subjective experience of free-will is not evidence for it)

>I think you got things mixed up here. The evidence is not highly lacking, and evolution came about because of the evidence, not the other way around. Whereas, creationism's evidence is nearly non-existent, and the very little evidence for it came about to support creationism. <

Darwin came up with the theroy as a result of seeing a bunch of birds that were on an island, that worked well with there surrondings.

>How does Species B just suddenly show up? I thought that the earth was created in six days? The reason why Species B came about is because of evolution. Species B evolved from another species.<
1. Nothing Pervents God from creating new Species.

>Care to explain what that is?
The bible does not explain how how the animals were created. It is my belif that God has a collection of molds, a fish mold, a four-legged creature mold, a bird mold, a primate mold, and some others. Each of these molds would create the basic shape of the mold, and give it some of the same properties.

>Even if that were true wouldn't that still go against the Bible? What year was it that the Bible said the world began? And how did so much happen in so little time? We had an ice-age, mountains changed shape, Noah had his little adventure with his ark, dinasours roamed the earth while appearantly humans existed at the sametime, something happened inbetween all of this that made the dinasours disappear, mountains changed shape, the Egyptians made their pyramids, and many other things (none of this in chronological order). How did all of that happen in such little time according to the year the Bible says the earth was created?<

Well we have the flood witch would of killed of the dinasours. The ice age was shortly after this. Mountains have changed shap slowly, the pyramids were build only a few thousand years ago.

>No, but since when do humans have the same intelligence level as a pack of animals? Also, how does this relate to what Clyde said?<
Intelligence has nothing to do with how you treat others, inteligently I would say we should just go and kill all the people of the middle east.

>Again, how does this relate to anything of what PJYelton wrote?
Do you think it was easy to be a Christiain in ancient Rome? If your faith is bassed on what others think around you then why call it faith.

>Do you have any sort of argument that God is likely besides the faith you have towards him being true? Lets put it this way, if somebody has never been introduce to any sort of religion how could you make him believe that God is true? There must be more than faith, right? <
The Good news is to be preached every where.

>Species evolve to help them fit their surroundings better. A specie may not need to evolve over a long period of time because there was no need for evolving over that time. About not being able to find fossils over a time period, it's not exactly easy to find fossils that existed over millions of years ago. You can't just go for a walk one day and find a two million year old fossil aying on the side of the road lol <
So DNA knows when it needs to change?

Ok, I'll debate the rest of the post when I get home. Class is over

"Darwin came up with the theroy as a result of seeing a bunch of birds that were on an island, that worked well with there surrondings."

.........

"1. Nothing Pervents God from creating new Species"

Perhaps not, thing is he doesn't need to since evolution will do it anyway.

"Well we have the flood witch would of killed of the dinasours"

.............

"Intelligence has nothing to do with how you treat others, inteligently I would say we should just go and kill all the people of the middle east. "

That err would be an intelligent thought? Anyhow i've already explained why morality is here and why people adhere to it, what more do you want?

"Do you think it was easy to be a Christiain in ancient Rome? If your faith is bassed on what others think around you then why call it faith"

Well quite, but "faith" is a cop out, a huge gigantic get out clause that effectively allows people to hide under the mantle of acceptability and yet at the same time profess to believe the impossiblly improbable.

"So DNA knows when it needs to change?"

........of course not, Darwinian selection results in organisms accumulating positive traits via mutation: Animal gets a positive mutation (with regards to environment), animal is more likely to pass on genes, positive mutation spreads through gene pool, rinse and repeat.

How exactly can argue about evolution when you do not grasp its most basic principles?