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04/06/2005 10:06:06 PM · #76 |
Originally posted by ReallyColorBlind:
Creationists don't need to look for inconsistancies. The inconsistancies already exist. |
Does that mean that scientists do not have to search for consistencies, as they already exist, too? I think in practice, those creationists who want to counter evolution spend a lot of time looking for inconsistencies with which to cast doubt on the theory of evolution.
However, I don't think that any scientist would pretend that there are not a great many unanswered questions about evolution, but these tend to relate to the increasingly focussed detail, not the grand sweep of the theory. The extent or importance of any disagreement over the theory can be magnified by taking it out of context or by exaggerating its impact on the theory as a whole. |
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04/06/2005 10:11:01 PM · #77 |
Originally posted by ReallyColorBlind:
Fact: I have a friend who worked on the first Apollo mission to the moon. They had to figure out how to land the module in several feet of moon dust because based on scientific THEORY of the earth being billions of years old, that's how much dust there should have been. They were very concerned about having to make a blind landing on instruments only. When the module landed, there was less than a quarter of an inch of moon dust. (For those who believe in creation; doing the math, a quarter inch of moon dust would equate to the earth being 6000 to 10000 years old).
Just one example of how scientific theories really missed the mark. (Oh yeah, and they never seem to report when one of their theories goes bust). |
I wasn't going to post this, but, RCB, you shouldn't be using arguments that even young earth creationist organizations suggest you don't use. |
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04/06/2005 10:22:29 PM · #78 |
Originally posted by legalbeagle:
Originally posted by ReallyColorBlind:
Creationists don't need to look for inconsistancies. The inconsistancies already exist. |
Does that mean that scientists do not have to search for consistencies, as they already exist, too? I think in practice, those creationists who want to counter evolution spend a lot of time looking for inconsistencies with which to cast doubt on the theory of evolution.
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See, but that's where you are mistaken. Christians (creationists) have a belief in God. They believe that when we die on this earth, there is another life waiting for them. To be a Christian, you must have faith in this. Speaking as a Christian, I don't really care about casting a doubt about evolution. I care about the fact that when I stand before God, I'm going to be questioned why I didn't tell more people about him. If I'm to believe in a heaven, and through Jesus Christ (sorry, had to use his name) I can get there, then it is my responsibility to offer this same gift to everyone I know. It's not for me to force anyone into a way of thinking. It's for me to present my belief and let them make the choice.
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04/06/2005 10:24:59 PM · #79 |
Originally posted by legalbeagle:
strangeghost - your comment was very well written. America has been the subject of much international attention and concern on the teaching of Evolution/Intelligent Design (viewed by most commentators as a backwards step). It is far too easy to forget the diversity of opinion and intelligent debate operating within the US itself. |
Amen! An eloquent post in response to Priest and Blind.
Message edited by author 2005-04-06 22:27:12. |
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04/06/2005 10:47:51 PM · #80 |
Originally posted by kpriest:
Most definitely matters. I don't want to go into the whole burning in hell forever discussion, but there are those that believe if you do not believe certain things you will suffer in that way. Obviously you can choose not to believe that, but if they are right, it will happen regardless of what you chose to believe. So should you choose to believe in God or any paricular religion out of fear of eternal torment? No. All I am saying is that whatever you decide to believe in, you better be right.
I'm not saying what will happen or judging anyone or condemning anyone and I don't feel those that believe in hell and how you get there are doing the judging either (as most people assume and are offended by it) - I am simply saying people should keep seeking the truth - and when you think you've got it, ask yourself "What if I'm wrong?" ;-) |
Good point and I have thought of that, but spin it back at your own words. if Science proves the bible wrong, the religious types are the ones with the most to lose. That means NO god, no heaven an hell. This is probably the biggest reason religion wants to stop those who believe in the big bang "theory" and evolution. Because that means almost 2 thousand years of teaching and preachings were wrong.
I am still undecided in my beliefs but leaning away from religion. Im not trying to make people go my way, just that there could be another answer out there other than what you have been told the answer is.
I guess my point is religion/creationism is a theory also, same as the big bang theory as it really has not been proved that we were created by a higher being. We have just been told that all our lives and we are told to BELIEVE that or burn in hell.
James |
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04/06/2005 10:51:54 PM · #81 |
Originally posted by Mulder:
as both Christianity and Islam accept the Torahtext
I'm a Christian, and in no way do I believe the Torah....I don't think (and hope none) do! |
I'm assuming he meant the Quran. But maybe not. He just seems to be ill-advised or under-educated about who's who and what's what in religion.
Message edited by author 2005-04-06 22:52:55. |
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04/06/2005 10:59:18 PM · #82 |
ltsimring, I hope you are happy now! You take a nice photo, and it turns into an all-out war between believers and non-conformists. :-)
This is a really interesting thread! I'm Switzerland in this one, I'll just sit out and watch. Excellent debate here, with some talented speakers... um, writers. GeneralIE, you are quite the historian! |
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04/06/2005 11:06:35 PM · #83 |
Not that anyone asked for it, but here's my take on the Creation/Evolution/Age of the Universe debate.
Theology and Science will always have disagreements, because both involve man's opinions and interpretations.
However.....
The Bible and the empirical record of nature will never disagree, because God was responsible for both of them.
You know what I think is interesting? The order in which Genesis 1 describes the creation of things....water based life/small plants/larger plants/fish/birds/land mammals/etc.....it's the exact same order in which these fossils are found in nature.
Edit to add: Just so I'm clear, I believe that Genesis 1:1 describes the Big Bang, and that the rest of Genesis 1 lays out the long periods of time over which God fine tuned his Creation.
Message edited by author 2005-04-06 23:08:37.
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04/06/2005 11:08:31 PM · #84 |
Originally posted by jab119:
Good point and I have thought of that, but spin it back at your own words. if Science proves the bible wrong, the religious types are the ones with the most to lose. That means NO god, no heaven an hell. |
First, let's separate "religious types" or "religion" from faith or belief. Religion is typically the practice of traditions associated with certain beliefs - any beliefs for that matter.
So, HOW are believer's the ones with the most to lose??? Pick any other belief, including (and especially) atheism or humanism. It may vary, but most of them believe when you die, your gone, no more, decomposing in the ground, etc. If that is true, as a believer in God, I will simply die, rot, cease to exist, etc. Same fate as the atheist. Once again, if the atheist is wrong...
I didn't become a Christian because of the fear of eternity and I would be hard pressed to stay one if that's all there was to it. As I've said, it is not something you can debate someone into believing - I know that very well as people tried it on me for years and I have tried it on people after I became a Christian. I read all these very informed, intelligent posts and it is hard for me to argue them because I could very well have been posting them only ten years back. All I can say is that the benefits of true faith are immediate, current, always present, and yes, also eternal - but that's the only part we're debating here.
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04/06/2005 11:08:59 PM · #85 |
Originally posted by Telehubbie:
GeneralIE, you are quite the historian! |
What'd I say? : )
I used to "hate" history in school; later I found out it was memorizing dates and monarchical succession I hated, and that "history" itself is pretty darned interesting when you look at some of the other issues.
An excellent example is given in Rats, Lice, and History -- about the effect of Typhus on human history. |
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04/06/2005 11:31:34 PM · #86 |
Originally posted by sfboatright:
The Bible and the empirical record of nature will never disagree, because God was responsible for both of them.
You know what I think is interesting? The order in which Genesis 1 describes the creation of things....water based life/small plants/larger plants/fish/birds/land mammals/etc.....it's the exact same order in which these fossils are found in nature.
Edit to add: Just so I'm clear, I believe that Genesis 1:1 describes the Big Bang, and that the rest of Genesis 1 lays out the long periods of time over which God fine tuned his Creation. |
Sorry to do this to you, sfboatright. You seem like a decent fellow.
Except for the part God gets wrong about birds and great sea creature (specifically whales) (Gen. 1:20) coming on the fifth day before land animals (Gen. 1:24) on the sixth day, right?
Why would a perfect being need to fine tune his creation?
Edited to add: Thanks for the book recommendation, GeneralE. I've added it to my Amazon wish list.
Message edited by author 2005-04-06 23:32:28. |
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04/06/2005 11:37:27 PM · #87 |
Originally posted by jab119:
I guess my point is religion/creationism is a theory also, same as the big bang theory |
As several, including strangeghost and myself have pointed out, the Big Bang is a theory in the scientific sense- it has been tested by many researchers using different techniques and approaches that have yet to cast serious doubt on the overall model. We don't yet know all the details, but the things we've been able to test so far agree with the model. The bible is a theory in the general, non-scientific sense that you think it's true and believe it despite contrary evidence or lack of scientific support. Everyone is entitled to his or her own beliefs.
Originally posted by jab119:
We have just been told that all our lives and we are told to BELIEVE that or burn in hell. |
Don't most religions pretty much say, "If you don't believe our teachings, you're going to suffer the consequences?" As far as I know, no religion in history has ever claimed a majority of the world's population. Even now, Christianity represents only about 33% of the population, so most people are doomed anyway.
Originally posted by sfboatright:
You know what I think is interesting? The order in which Genesis 1 describes the creation of things....water based life/small plants/larger plants/fish/birds/land mammals/etc.....it's the exact same order in which these fossils are found in nature. |
Well of course it is (if only generally). Every religion must attempt to explain the things that are readily observed around us in order to have credibility, and fossils didn't suddenly appear in the 1800's. Greek philosphers probably had a good handle on the order of complexity in nature long before the Bible was written. What I find fascinating is that a religion can maintain its credibility even when it DOESN'T agree with a simple observation (*cough*Galileo*cough*). I was amused by a news documentary this week when it chronicled the Vatican firmly denying that the Pope had Parkinson's disease for 10 years, even though it was plainly visible to anyone who saw him. See no evil, hear no evil...
Message edited by author 2005-04-06 23:38:43. |
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04/06/2005 11:41:59 PM · #88 |
| General, I'm right there with you about history. I didn't care much for it in school either. But I wish I had paid more attention now as I'm getting older. It is really interesting, and I wish I knew more about it and how it relates to our world today. I'll check out your recommendation, thanks. |
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04/07/2005 12:45:01 AM · #89 |
Originally posted by milo655321:
Sorry to do this to you, sfboatright. You seem like a decent fellow.
Except for the part God gets wrong about birds and great sea creature (specifically whales) (Gen. 1:20) coming on the fifth day before land animals (Gen. 1:24) on the sixth day, right?
Why would a perfect being need to fine tune his creation?
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hehe...no offense taken at all.
I'm just not sure I follow you. How exactly is God "wrong?"
Edit to add: I should probably specify...I meant how is He wrong in the above verses you cited? (I'm not looking for a treatise on the nature of suffering and the paradox of an omnibenevolent/omnipotent God in a painful universe....haha.)
Message edited by author 2005-04-07 01:18:59.
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04/07/2005 01:01:31 AM · #90 |
| Well, after reading this entire thread......I thank God for evolution. |
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04/07/2005 05:57:35 AM · #91 |
I must admit, I had thought that most modern Christians took the Bible, and in particular the book of Genesis, for what it appears to be: a genesis story, allegorical perhaps, but written in and for a different era.
I understand and have no criticism of those who believe that behind our modern understanding of creation is God, and can reconcile modern scientific thought with the biblical genesis story in the important respects (ie god created the universe and man through a process more akin to the scientific theory than a strict interpretation of the genesis text).
I cannot understand why anyone would persist in believing the young Earth theory (in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary), merely because one religious text includes a geneology that supposedly goes back to the first day of creation. The Bible was not intended to be a scientific text, but a spiritual guide. It is not accurate. Parts of the stories are themselves much older than the Torah (hence the repetition of familiar creation stories, such as a flood, across a variety of religions, and histories, arising in the middle east).
Blind faith and unswerving belief in one interpretation of a religious text does smack of fanaticism. Christians do not generally take every word of the bible literally (or we would be stoning adulterers etc). So why should we take every word of genesis to be literal truth?
Having travelled in the middle east and having seen excavations of some of the oldest settlements (dating to around 6000 BC) and human artefacts (earliest statuary, again 6000 BC) in Jordan, you get a really good appreciation of the development of human society over thousands of years. I know that carbon dating, tree ring dating, strata dating and all the other dating techniques can be criticised individually, but when a number of them together demonstrate an early date? Why would we hold a religous text as providing better evidence than the physical reality we can see, touch and measure? |
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04/07/2005 06:32:40 AM · #92 |
Since this thread has wandered away from discussing a challenge entry into a general religious arguement, I've moved this thread to Rant.
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04/07/2005 06:39:24 AM · #93 |
Well, it's great to see we're such a diverse group with several different levels of understanding within your own faith (be it creation or be it evolution). I'm glad to see that we are all different because otherwise, life would be boring. Imagine how boring our photos would be if we all had the same idea.
This thread has been fun, but I'm getting dizzy from going around in circles. I'm going to go pay attention to some other threads now.
-RCB |
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04/07/2005 08:51:47 AM · #94 |
Originally posted by sfboatright:
I'm just not sure I follow you. How exactly is God "wrong?"
Edit to add: I should probably specify...I meant how is He wrong in the above verses you cited? (I'm not looking for a treatise on the nature of suffering and the paradox of an omnibenevolent/omnipotent God in a painful universe....haha.) |
No problem, sfb, and I'll note that even I think I'm being a little pedantic. I was just noting that order of the emergence of creatures in the Biblical timeline is different from what is found in the geologic column.
Biblical: sea creatures (including whales) and birds (fifth day), then land animals (sixth day)
geologic column: sea creatures (minus whales), then land animals, then birds, then whales (I could be mistaken about whether birds or whales appear first in the geologic column. I'm not a paleontologist.) |
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04/07/2005 12:03:30 PM · #95 |
Originally posted by milo655321:
Originally posted by sfboatright:
I'm just not sure I follow you. How exactly is God "wrong?"
Edit to add: I should probably specify...I meant how is He wrong in the above verses you cited? (I'm not looking for a treatise on the nature of suffering and the paradox of an omnibenevolent/omnipotent God in a painful universe....haha.) |
No problem, sfb, and I'll note that even I think I'm being a little pedantic. I was just noting that order of the emergence of creatures in the Biblical timeline is different from what is found in the geologic column.
Biblical: sea creatures (including whales) and birds (fifth day), then land animals (sixth day)
geologic column: sea creatures (minus whales), then land animals, then birds, then whales (I could be mistaken about whether birds or whales appear first in the geologic column. I'm not a paleontologist.) |
I would just caution you that being pedantic and overly literal is a common trademark of those in the 'young Earth' camp. ;-)
I think the point is that the patterns are consistent with details that I don't believe would have been readily available to the author at the time. I mean, how accurately could you describe the geologic column off the top of your head, and you're living in the Information Age?!? Moses was a former Egyptian slave who had been wandering around the desert for years when he wrote that stuff. Pretty darn impressive if you asked me.
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04/07/2005 12:17:28 PM · #96 |
Originally posted by legalbeagle:
Christians do not generally take every word of the bible literally (or we would be stoning adulterers etc). So why should we take every word of genesis to be literal truth?
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Just to quickly address this as I understand it:
I think that most christians do take the bible literally...that is, they believe every word in the manner in which it was intended to be understood. For example, the psalms are understood to be songs and are not taken as instruction but as worship and poetry.
Many parts of the bible are clear in what was intended when it was written. Some are specifically historic, others 'law', others are letters which should be read in context.
Here's where the problem comes in...christians that take the bible literally still need to decide how the genesis account was intended to be received. Was it intended as allegory? Was it intended to be accurate history? That's where the debate lies, even among christians that 'literally' believe the bible.
Ironically, the other end (Revelations) is probably the only part of the bible that is debated even more as far as "How should we understand this?".
Great discussion...
Edited to add:
As much as I've been instructed otherwise, I find myself leaning towards an allegorical or perhaps 'mythical' take on Genesis. I'm a christian through and through, but the way that creation-account in Genesis is written just doesn't sound anything like the other parts of the Torah...actually, it sounds different even from the rest of Genesis. It has a mythical feel to it...not mythical as in untrue, but mythical as in story-like, not concerned with details...I don't know.
Message edited by author 2005-04-07 12:20:50.
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04/07/2005 12:29:51 PM · #97 |
Originally posted by milo655321:
Originally posted by sfboatright:
I'm just not sure I follow you. How exactly is God "wrong?"
Edit to add: I should probably specify...I meant how is He wrong in the above verses you cited? (I'm not looking for a treatise on the nature of suffering and the paradox of an omnibenevolent/omnipotent God in a painful universe....haha.) |
No problem, sfb, and I'll note that even I think I'm being a little pedantic. I was just noting that order of the emergence of creatures in the Biblical timeline is different from what is found in the geologic column.
Biblical: sea creatures (including whales) and birds (fifth day), then land animals (sixth day)
geologic column: sea creatures (minus whales), then land animals, then birds, then whales (I could be mistaken about whether birds or whales appear first in the geologic column. I'm not a paleontologist.) |
Whales are mammals, and began as land creatures who returned to the seas. Birds derive from reptiles. I'd expect that birds predated whales for this reason, particularly if you accept Pterodactyls as birds LOL.
Robt.
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04/07/2005 12:38:29 PM · #98 |
Originally posted by sfboatright:
Moses was a former Egyptian slave who had been wandering around the desert for years when he wrote that stuff. Pretty darn impressive if you asked me. |
And as you point out, pretty unlikely. I am pretty sure that not even the most fundamentalist Christian or Jew believes that there exists in this temporal plane one single scrap of anything actually written by the hand of Moses, or any of the other authors of the Bible either. Every bit of Scripture we possess is the later written "transcription" of a pre-existing oral history.
Add to that, when most people cite the Bible as the "literal Word of God" they conveniently "forget" that God didn't speak English 4000 years ago -- we are reading the necessarily inaccurate translations of languages long-dead.
I wonder what percentage of Christians know in which language the Bible is (mostly) written ... |
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04/07/2005 01:05:08 PM · #99 |
Concerning the Genesis account.
If you are to take it "literally" but NOT considering the "day" of Genesis to be a literal "day", then you must find some "scientific" way to explain just how long a "day" could be based on just how long "grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind" could exist without light.
Genesis says that THEY ( the plants ) were created on the THIRD day, but "the greater light to rule the day" ( the sun ) wasn't created until the FOURTH day. Seems to me, that if you profess belief in the creation account of Genesis, then you must take it as literal truth - or explain how it is that plants could live for so long without light.
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04/07/2005 01:06:38 PM · #100 |
GeneralE, I always value your input but it never fails that in threads involving religion you let your emotions take over...don't get me wrong, I often do as well but that's why I try not to get involved.
Your consistent treatment of christians as utter imbiciles who conveniently 'forget' things and don't know original language of scripture is insulting and seems so contrary to your nature as I see it in other threads.
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