You should really work on your spelling though. Evenn iff theyy aree typoos they aree increaasingly annoooying.

Plus, K_A, you're not helping your arguments- they will not listen to your theological speculations. No, no speculations will be listened to. Either you disprove their statements, or you prove yours. Most of the times in the case of 'purely' God, the conclusion is that you will never ever know. (The argument usually gets metaphysical, and everyone starts running away from the argument.)
In theology, however, I've seen useless and meaningless babbles about the Bible of which both sides knew absolutely nothing. They were essentially talking out of their asses. But vice versa, the way I see it- you know nearly nothing of Science, and are getting hard owned. You are essentially talking out of your ass. If you want to make a convincing argument, please do and study. Of course Science does not intrinsically cross heads with most of the Bible. Only that certain views and interpretations do. In fact, most of the Bible is historically accurate. Although, I don't believe Genesis to be literal. Even if God did make one truly understand the beginning, would one still be able to put it into words that others will be able to understand fully? Even our simple feelings are hard to be understood through words, what would words have any meaning in that?

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Mar 27 2011, 2:28 am by BeDazed.

Well it actually doesn't agree with your point. In fact I'm not sure what your point was originally - I wanted to correct you and previous posters on a point of fact (i.e. what speciation is).

Basically, dogs are the mammal with the most variation in morphology (i.e. their shape and form). As far as I'm aware, all dogs of whatever breed are still canis lupus familiaris and can have fertile offspring with one another. Despite the apparent differences between a poodle and an irish wolfhound, for example, they are like 99.9% genetically similar.

However, you can look at human efforts at creating distinct breeds of dog and in that see how selection (whether natural or artificial) causes change in a population over time. I think it's the massive timescales involved in evolution that make people a little incredulous of the theory, rather than the lack of any empirical basis. People just can't grasp that incremental change over such a long period of time could eventually cause homo sapiens sapiens to become distinct from an ape-like ancestor, for example.

However, on less complex animals evolution can be shown to occur in real time. Bacteria are observed to evolve in petri dishes when exposed to toxins and so on, through spontaneous mutations, insertion of sections of each other's DNA plasmids (kind of like bacteriasex) and the resulting natural selection when a bacterium carries a mutation which confers protection against the toxin.

If you want a human example though, try this. Malaria is endemic to large parts of Africa, and so is sickle-cell anaemia. Sickle-cell anaemia is caused when a child inherits two recessive sickle-cell alleles from his/her parents, so by all accounts it should be pretty rare. People with two recessive alleles end up with full-blown sickle-cell where the red blood cells are an abnormal shape due to mutant haemoglobin. The malaria parasite cannot invade these mutant cells, and finds it difficult to invade the red blood cells of people carrying one recessive allele (these people live normal lives). Having one recessive allele therefore confers an advantage in areas stricken by malaria. Over time this causes a proliferation of the sickle-cell trait in the population - natural selection at work, ensuring the survival of otherwise damaging mutations which would normally end up bred out.

----------------
Whoever is talking about carbon dating and how it's apparently based on a false premise really doesn't know what they're talking about. If they think Carbon-14 is dangerously radioactive then maybe they should check out its decay energy, which is pathetically small, and perhaps its half-life (which is, after all, what carbon dating is based on).

I concur with Lanthanide on the whole ice-core debate. It is hard really to understand why, more than 150 years after geologists began publishing works that conflicted with the Biblical story of creation and in light of the steady accumulation of more and more evidence to suggest that the Earth is in fact many millions of years old, some religious folks still cling desperately to the faith "argument" like a drowning man clutching a piece of flotsam. Faith is such a crutch and I think it's high time that people dropped it altogether and just judged their religion on its values and tried to make a better society. As I've said before, God (if "he" even exists) is irrelevant.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 27 2011, 4:49 am by CaptainWill.

My main reason for saying that is my laziness. I'm getting tired of the stupid arguments where you guys all think your smarter than me simply because I'm a Christian. How about we all find out when we die? If your right, nothing happens. If I'm right, I spend eternity in heaven. If you want to spit on Jesus more, he doesn't care. He's to busy getting up the hill so he can die for you. If you got more questions, read (or watch it's a movie to) The Case For Christ. It's full of answers a lot better than mine, and it's by a guy who used to be an atheist who changed his mind only using reason and science.

For a thread about evolution, there is very little evolution (of the argument/topic) going on. I am disapoint.

We're still on god?

1. Radio-carbon argument (a few pages back) - carbon-14 poisonous? No. Whoever said that didn't really know what they were talking about. Carbon-14 isotopes exist in absolutely minute quantities, something like 0.001% of the total carbon in the world is carbon-14. It is created when solar radiation hits nitrogen atoms in the upper atmosphere. We know that the rate of solar radiation has not been steady over the last hundred thousand years - but we know it fluctuated slightly and therefore radio-carbon dates are mitigated against these fluctuations. Anyway, radio-carbon dating suffers from both inaccuracy and imprecision - but it still states that the world is a lot older than what the bible says. Carbon dating of the Turin Shroud for example.

2. holes in the bible... what is science... Jack stated that you do not have to refute science to be a christian, and I presume vice versa, that you do not have to denounce christianity to believe science. While this is true, religion has so many inconsistencies and 'holes' which science can and has dis-proven. BUT... it doesn't matter what is proven and what is unproven. Religion is a matter for personal choice, freedom and faith. I think that to believe in religion (fully), you must either turn a blind eye to science (entirely) or accept that religion has (some) flaws. But, that is what I think and for the most part, that is largely irrelevant.

I am agnostic - I believe there is some greater power - be it God, Krisna, Allah, Brahman, Yahweh... or maybe there is no god and that the greater power is merely Yin and Yang which pervades through our lives... or perhaps Karma and enlightenment are what truly exist. There is also the possibility that this Supreme Being or God is unknowable to mere mortals, and debating his or her existence is futile since we may never know for sure. And the final possibility is that there is one greater power who has made itself known throughout various religions, and we are all worshiping the same god under various aliases. These are merely worldly divisions and separations, and I, being agnostic, choose to admit they exist but choose not to practice or adhere to such divisions.

Science (or what is science today) underwent periods of enlightenment throughout the last 200 years. The birth of empiricism (observing, measuring, recording, building facts) and the earlier adoption of nomothetic practices (finding general laws, disproving/consolidating theories) for me, are what constitute as science. We know water boils at 100 degrees centigrade because this has been observed, measured and recorded in a laboratory. We know that gravity exists due to (well, common knowledge) but a law of gravity exists. Similarly Newtons' laws, 'every action there is a opposite and equal reaction' - are nomothetic applications of 'science'.

So, in this stand-point, science and religion are both mutually compatible and entirely juxtaposed. Science cannot disprove or prove that god exists since religion cannot be observed, measured and recorded. Similarly, religion cannot aid scientific advancement since religion is, by nature, not scientific (it lacks objectivity: 'judgment based on observable phenomena and uninfluenced by emotions or personal prejudices').

Can we get onto the fun idea of evolution now? Where's that great dane and the chihuahua gone?

Read this in Titus today so I'm done arguing.
As for evolution, love the idea of it, and (although my mother would disagree) it obviously does happen or we'd all be clones of Adam and Eve. I might get attacked by some ignorant Christians, but large amounts of the Bible are not meant to be taken literally as they were intended to be understood by people who had little understanding of modern science. Imagine God trying to explain to Moses that the israelites shouldn't be having multiple sex partners because of STD's. Or
Jesus telling the disciples about evolution. Everyone would have just dismissed him and he wouldn't have gotten the point across.
Science is cool, and I'm peacin out.
Still prayin for ya faz you got a good head on your shoulders. Just don't forget where you got it.

Actually god could have explained germ theory. It really isn't that difficult to understand in basic terms - there are tiny tiny little creatures that make you sick, and they like to live in specific places, and when they get inside your body they make you sick, and you pass them on to other people and make them sick.

Pretty simple stuff, and would have given civilisation a huge leap forwards and made huge impacts on everyone's daily lives. But then again, god was a huge jerk who doesn't help people along with simple information where he easily could, and likes to deliberately leave fossils and other evidence around just to confound us and test our faith.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germ_theory_of_disease

I tried to explain some of the mechanisms of evolution. The topic isn't completely derailed.

If religious folks wanted some ammunition against the theory of evolution then they should perhaps look at the decline of evangelical humanitarianism and the rise of scientific racism in the mid 19th century, and the effects it had on the way colonial empires were run and non-whites were treated.

That reminded me of the FSM (Flying Spaghetti Monster). Did you know there is an inverse relationship between the number of pirates and average global temperatures? [/sarcasm]


Source: http://www.venganza.org/about/open-letter/

Jack (and the other creationists), would you care to disprove the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster's theory of creation, since you believe that your own Christian view is the only correct one? If you haven't heard of the story, here is a tl;dr version:

The Flying Spaghetti Monster is the supreme being who created the Earth and the Universe. He used His own Noodly Appendage to form the land, the sea, the atmosphere, and all living organisms. No one alive today has ever seen Him, but Pastafarians devoutly believe in the writings of those who have witnessed His Noodly Appendage without question. He is always changing the results of our experiments with His Noodly Appendage. Any observable evidence that exists is just a distraction trying to test our faith in the great and all-powerful Flying Spaghetti Monster.

EDIT: Are all creationists like this? Love Hate Messages to the FSM

Only in the case I referred to the causal links are numerous and demonstrable. I wanted to show that in some cases religion could be a force for good and science a force for bad. The validity of a belief system depends on the ends for which it is used.

@the FsM, the Bible says God created the world, while pastafarianism says the FSM created the world. Ergo, the FSM is unbiblical, and therefore wrong. No, this isn't scientific. No, you cannot scientifically disprove FSM OR christianity.

@rai, dragons are dinosaurs. There are numerous dragon fossils in the world.

@will My point was that changes in shape, size, colour etc. don't mean something has evolved. E.g. Peppered moth, over 9000 fruit fly experiments).
I am fine with natural selection. I am against the theory that species can become new species.

What will said about carbon radiation being minor is correct.

Will, the evidence so called is insufficient to prove that the world is millions of years old. As you say, it 'suggests' that the world may be that old. It may also be 6000 years old.

If God exists, then He is highly relevant. Is not an omnipotent omniscient being rather important in the general scheme of things?

Why would God explain germ theory? He promoted and commanded cleanliness in the Bible, but knowing germ theory doesn't really help one with religious things, which is what the Bible is about. While the Bible is scientifically accurate in everything science related, it is not a scientific textbook.

1) Unbiblical =/= wrong.
2) So your saying that dinosaurs survived to a few years after 0 AD? And still managed to leave fossils? And no recorded encounters except that part from the Infancy Gospel of Matthew? Shit, just shit.
3) Changes like that can totally add up to species separation. Since it's late today, tomorrow I'll find an article or something that discusses 2 species (almost identical, more identical than breeds of dogs) of snapping shrimps that got separated by moving tectonic plates and now end up giving the finger to each other instead of mating.
4) No. He was referring to how carbon-14 was NOT poisonous, and how little you proably know about the topic.
5) So if there are shitloads of evidence "suggesting" that the world is millions years old and a (questionable) book saying that it is 6000 years old, we should follow the book. Very nice. No. At least give us some evidence.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 29 2011, 7:51 pm by CecilSunkure. Reason: Martyring; spam.

I am also fine with natural selection and sexual selection (Darwin's other, lesser known theory which he actually preferred to natural selection), and I do have some nagging doubts about parts of evolution itself. However, the thing you appear to disagree with is speciation, which definitely does occur. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciation)

As for your point about geology, Carbon-14 dating is not the only kind of radiometric dating, but is useful in dating of organic material due to its relative abundance there and the fact it's the longest lived isotope found in organic material (afaik). Other radioactive isotopes decay much more slowly, making them useful in determining the age of rocks or other types of inorganic material. Rocks have been found on Earth which are approximately 4 billion years old. (http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/geotime/age.html) While the Earth may not be 4 billion years old, the chances of it being 6,000 years old are much slimmer based on the empirical evidence available to us.

What has "God" ever done for you personally? What evidence have you seen, first hand, that he is omnipotent or omniscient? As far as I know, he's never done a bloody thing in my lifetime or in living memory - all events can be explained comfortably by human action, weather systems, and tectonic activity, for example. What has he done? Is he asleep? Is he dead? Has he got fed up with the universe and gone to some other plane of existence? So long as he appears to do nothing (if he exists) then I'm not too bothered about his relevance.

Incorrect. However, as I said, I was referring to religious matters; I was attempting to show you that you cannot ask me to disprove FSM when you cannot disprove Christianity. In addition, that thread of discussion is totally offtopic.
Sure. There's reason to believe plesiosaurs are still alive, or were until very recently. I don't know about the ones from 0 AD leaving fossils; it may be possible in some circumstances for them to leave a fossil in that time, but they may not have. I don't know why you continue to persevere with this Infancy Gospel of Matthew nonsesnse; even at the time it was translated it was doubted to be authentic. It certainly doesn't agree with the rest of the Bible. And there are recorded instances of dragons from many cultures until fairly recently, both in mythology and in recorded accounts of events. Marco Polo talked of the emperor keeping dragons for ceremonies.
k.
Please read more carefully. Will was saying that K_A was incorrect to say that carbon 14 radiation could cause poisoning. I agreed with him. The reason carbon 14 radiation is not poisonous is because it emits very little ionized radioactive material. In the event of a nuclear explosion or nuclear fallout, huge amounts of ionized radioactive material is released. Carbon14 decay and indeed, any other element's decay is generally not enough to cause damage or poisoning. Some elements are capable of it, such as caesium, and will cause great damage to you if you get hold of any. While carbon 14 does release radioactive material, it is in small amounts such as one generally receives from background radiation. You are also resorting to ad hominem, a practice looked down on in this forum. I've taken one course which covered nuclear science, had a basic education of nuclear science at school, and done a little reading into the subject myself. So not only was it ad hominem, it was ill-informed ad hominem.
I didn't say that. Now you're using strawman arguments. Firstly, there is not enough evidence to PROVE that the world is millions of years old. There is a certain amount of evidence that suggests that it is indeed a possibility. There is also evidence to suggest that the world is 6000 years old. However, that evidence is generally looked down on by the scientific community because it doesn't fit their worldview.

No, it isn't spam, but it doesn't use well formulated arguments, doesn't follow proper debating/SD procedure, and uses logical fallacies.

See, looking at that article it basically says back in the past speciation occured. As in, back during the last ice age. This is the same sort of thing as "man descended from chimps". There is no evidence, just suggestions that it may be so. Now, there may be some fish in close proximity to each other that don't mate that look similar. This doesn't automatically mean they had a common ancestor, or that one evolved from the other.

SO THERE IS A CHANCE? HA! No but seriously, I want something closer to proof of one or the other. I doubt the 6000 years thing will ever be proved (but I believe that for religious reasons; I think God intentionally doesn't have signs in the sky saying I AM HERE or obvious markers that the world is 6000 years old because then it defeats the purpose of faith. However, I think that there are certainly signs pointing towards the world being 6000 years old. ANYWAY) but I also doubt the 4 billion years thing will be proved.
He gave me happiness. Even if He doesn't exist, my belief in Him has given me that. If He DOES exist, then He personally has given me it. Either way, I'm both thankful and happy. I am content with the life He's given me, the circumstances I am in, the work I have, the family I have, the friends I have, etc. The evidence I have seen is the world in general, and life in general (I don't believe in evolution. Life didn't just appear. God made life, so he's at the very least EXTREMELY powerful.) and the Bible. Also, there are many unexplainable things in the world which the Bible can explain and you can't. Can you explain the Phillipino healers? How about the lack of blood and pain during a Thaipusam ceremony? Ever heard of Ze Arigo? His healings have been videod. He uses a rusty knife to diagnose people. I could go on with more, but I'll leave you with that for now

Well that's a loaded question. I think most Christians will tell you that they've felt God in some way.

There is never enough evidence to PROVE anything. But that doesn't mean there isn't overwhelming evidence in favour of something being the case. Easy example is gravity. We can't prove gravity exists, but there's lots of overwhelming evidence for it.

So going on about "you can't PROVE anything" isn't actually constructive. We can prove things beyond reasonable doubt (much as they do in court), and that is the definition of 'prove' we should use when talking about these subjects. Not 100%-infallible-definitely-not-wrong, because obviously if you use that definition, absolutely nothing could be proved because we could be living in The Matrix or someone's day dream.

I would say there are thousands of separate pieces of evidence that suggest the world is very much older than 6,000 years.

You need to discredit most, if not all of this evidence, for the bible's answer to be taken seriously.

So far the refutations generally go:
1. God did it that way just to confuse us 'cause he's a dick (created fossils, created the grand canyon etc)
2. Things in the passed worked differently (weather, radioactive decay of carbon 14)

#2 isn't a sufficient answer, you then have to explain *why* things worked differently, at the very least. The answers to this become:
1. God did it
2. I don't know, shut up, you don't know either, nyah nyah nyah

2.1 then becomes the same answer as #1 above, and 2.2 isn't an answer at all.

Again you are conflating scientific thought and processes with that practised by religion. Science gathers evidence, and draws conclusions. Religion gathers evidence (reluctantly), then interprets it in the way that supports, or at the very least doesn't go against, their original hypothesis. I already covered this earlier in the thread.

If the scientific process were indeed the same as the one used by religion, then yes, I too would probably believe in what the bible says because frankly it's more plausible to say "A because of B" than it is to just say "A, well, because". But they are fundamentally different. If you think they're the same, then you really don't know anything about science. Of course we already know that from your arguments in this thread anyway.

You cannot prove beyond reasonable doubt that the world is billions of years old. If you can, come at me bro.

I never said that it was religion that found evidence of a 6000 year old world, scarecrow. Scientists did. Using the scientific process. That the scientists are generally Christians is irrelevant; numerous famous scientists have made discoveries that the secular world have no problems with. It's when science shows that the Bible may in fact be correct that the secular world and scientists start making a fuss.

I have been discrediting several of those things in this topic; carbon dating, speciation, ice cores showing an old world. If there is more for me to discredit, by all means tell me them. Also, even if I discredited every so gle thing you say, I doubt you would believe the Bible's answer.

I think most Muslims will say the same, as will most Jews, as will most African herdsmen, as will most pre-colonial natives, as would have most worshippers of Ra, Thor, or any of the Greco-Roman gods. I can't think of anything that is more obviously placebo.

This to me was the key factor in ignoring religion. Members of every faith will tell you, in perfect honesty and with full conviction, that they have felt some god's impact in their life; that their achievements are due to his guidance; that they owe everything to his wisdom. Every one of them might have some personal anecdote of otherworldly influence, but by simple logic, the vast majority of them are wrong. Most are monotheistic faiths- only one of those at most can possibly be correct.


If there are any unanswered questions about evolution feel free to repost them, I really don't feel like skimming that mass of misinformation which was hopefully rectified.

Yes, you've tried, but you got countered. It's your turn to invalidate the counter-counterarguments, FYI.
(At least for carbon dating and ice cores. Not sure about speciation.)

I just realized we had this thread, so it's probably better to post it here:

I doubt I can to you. Thankfully, I don't consider you reasonable, and thankfully, scientists who actually use that knowledge in their work don't need it proven to them. The most likely explanation that matches up mathematically over various fields gives rather precise figures for the ages of our universe, our earth, and our sun that are in the billions of years.


For example, carbon dating has a limit of ~50,000 years, it's not used for anything seriously prehistorical. You can "discredit" that all you want by quoting some guy who's never carbon dated anything in his life, but there are many different types of measurement that rely on different elements with different decay rates and they all end up looking pretty much the same. You can say "maybe the rate changed over time for carbon", and "maybe the rate changed over time for uranium-thorium", and "maybe the rates changed over time for potassium-argon", and "maybe the rates changed over time for uranium-lead" and dismiss them and more as all unreliable. And yet, results on objects using different techniques, measured in different labs, continually confirm each other. At some point, your argument is revealed for what it is: ludicrous, and parsimony takes the cake: radiometric dating works.

And yet- this isn't proof. Science is not about proving things. You still don't get it. Just because evidence can be used in a non-standard way doesn't mean that either way is correct. Science defaults to "I don't know, but I'm going to try to find the most likely explanation for now." You're defaulting to "I know this answer is the correct one, so I'm going to find whatever evidence I can to support that and ignore the rest of it."

Another example, that's great and hasn't been touched on:
Humans can't produce Vitamin C. This is because of a defect in our genetic code, copied among humans for thousands of years. Various animals with this code slightly tweaked can produce the vitamin. Relatives phylogenetically near to us like monkeys "coincidentally" have the same problem. Please explain why a god would make such a mistake when, by simply changing a few nucleotides, he could have saved hundreds of thousands of people and monkeys from death by scurvy?

Seems pretty consistent to me. The Bible tells you to learn about "stuffz" except when it contradicts what it says, and then it tells you to look for reasons that "stuffz" is wrong.


Which scientists have done this and in what peer reviewed journal have their results been published? The arguments you're reading and using are not by scientists, they're by people outside of the fields who are just making things up.

See above. Cite a scientific source that actually says this, not "Helen" on some forum. If you can't, it's quite by definition not scientifically acceptable.


I got it from my parents. Both from their genes, and from the work they put in during my childhood to make me the inquisitive and curious person that I've become today.