Evidence for/against Evolution - a discussion - Page 2

**The An-Jel** · 01-23-2007, 11:37 PM

There just is no place for faith in science until there is ABSOLUTE PROOF of the existence of any form of God-like being.

Og · 01-24-2007, 07:49 AM

Faith is such a charged word.

And science doesn't get proof. It gets evidence

Proofs are for mathematicians using axioms of their language.

THEWAULRUS · 03-14-2007, 06:12 AM

Evolution is simply a theory. Just like the concept of gravity. Theory is defined as a well supported testable explanation of phenomena that have occurred in the natural world. To be a theory as stated above, it demands proof. Religious establishments claim that Earth is only 5-6 thousand of years old. Fossils dated with radioactive and relative dating tell us a different story. It says that Earth is at least 4.5 billions of years old. This is based on rocks found and dated using modern dating techniques. That is of course a big difference from what the Genesis states. Science says the oldest modern human remains(homo sapiens) found and dated go as far back as almost 200 thousand of years. The book of Genesis states that humans and the world was created in seven days. First question that arises is how long is seven days? Can we, simple humans, hope that God lives in the same time stream as us and follows the same laws? That would be foolish to even consider that a being such as that is restrained or even knows the concept of time. Next question arises is why dinosaurs are not mentioned in any holy books, even though they exist as shown by many remains. Would God really spend his time to stick bones with false age to test our faith? If he is all knowing as religion claims, he should know who follows the path of faith and who will stop believing after he finds the fossils and dates them.

This "dates" concept keeps on coming up. When ever you think something got dated, you think using the half-lives of carbon-14 or the process called relative dating. There are two things wrong with that. Not all things contain carbon such as the rocks I previously said were dated in order to determine the age of earth because they are inorganic. The process of relative dating which is giving an object an approximate age by it's location in the sedimentary rock is highly inaccurate and only gives you an estimate. So how do they do it? Well there are many more elements than just carbon.And all of them have different half lives that last up to billions of years. Carbon dating doesn't get you enough information because it's limit is at most 60 thousand years.

Ok sorry, I went a little bit off topic. So if the Earth is full of fossils that pass the age when it was created as it was said in the bible, one of those clearly must be wrong. Judging what Bible really is nowadays, you can see that it is not what it was when it was created. Even though the first Bible was written down, how many times was it simply destroyed, or retold from person to person. We have no conclusive evidence that the oldest Bible is the correct version. First of all, the translation could be wrong. Number two, the oldest Bible we have is not the original. Number three, it's not true. And does anybody here wonder why different Christian establishments use DIFFERENT versions of the Bible? The most preserved religious writing is the Qu'ran because it was never translated and was created during the age when things were quickly written down. Also ,don't forget, humans are not perfect and have a tendency to exaggerate.

Now let's take a look at it's events. Garden of Eden- A snake gets those two to eat a forbidden fruit. That would not be possible simply because a snake has no larynx or vocal chords and can only produce a hissing sound.
Noah's Ark- Even though the story repeats itself many times over different cultures it would not be possible because for that to happen, it would have to rain at the rate of 44ft/hr.

What's the conclusion we receive from this? The Bible is an assortment of "stories" that are used to put the people on the righteous path to go to heaven and save their soul. The Bible teaches valuable lessons, that if everyone followed would make the world a very good place to live in. I personally have no objections with the commandments such as do not steal or kill.

Now if we look at creation from science's standpoint, we clearly see what they think happened. Over billions of years, life emerged in prokaryotic cells, which later evolved into organelles that make up the eukaryotic cells we are made up from. Those cells evolved and combined into more complex organisms. Those organisms were either wiped out forever or adjusted and lived as time moved on. Then the organisms became diverse, and adaptive radiation kicked in. Adaptive radiation is a concept that one species becomes an origin for many of others to come. Evolution is just constant adaptation and struggle for life. You can clearly see a process called co-evolution in plants and insects. Plants adjust so the insects can eat them and insects find ways to bypass that in order to survive. Co-evolution is simply survival of the fittest. But then people look at Darwin, creator of study of evolution as we know it and some hate him. They hate him because he said that we come from monkeys. DNA testing proved that we are similar to monkeys. That cannot be disproved. The only important question science has no answer to is why some monkeys evolved and others didn't. What triggered that event? We may never know.

I am eagerly waiting for replies.

Fire Legion · 03-14-2007, 10:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by THEWAULRUS

Evolution is simply a theory. Just like the concept of gravity. Theory is defined as a well supported testable explanation of phenomena that have occurred in the natural world. To be a theory as stated above, it demands proof. Religious establishments claim that Earth is only 5-6 thousand of years old. Fossils dated with radioactive and relative dating tell us a different story. It says that Earth is at least 4.5 billions of years old. This is based on rocks found and dated using modern dating techniques. That is of course a big difference from what the Genesis states. Science says the oldest modern human remains(homo sapiens) found and dated go as far back as almost 200 thousand of years. The book of Genesis states that humans and the world was created in seven days. First question that arises is how long is seven days? Can we, simple humans, hope that God lives in the same time stream as us and follows the same laws? That would be foolish to even consider that a being such as that is restrained or even knows the concept of time. Next question arises is why dinosaurs are not mentioned in any holy books, even though they exist as shown by many remains. Would God really spend his time to stick bones with false age to test our faith? If he is all knowing as religion claims, he should know who follows the path of faith and who will stop believing after he finds the fossils and dates them.

This "dates" concept keeps on coming up. When ever you think something got dated, you think using the half-lives of carbon-14 or the process called relative dating. There are two things wrong with that. Not all things contain carbon such as the rocks I previously said were dated in order to determine the age of earth because they are inorganic. The process of relative dating which is giving an object an approximate age by it's location in the sedimentary rock is highly inaccurate and only gives you an estimate. So how do they do it? Well there are many more elements than just carbon.And all of them have different half lives that last up to billions of years. Carbon dating doesn't get you enough information because it's limit is at most 60 thousand years.

Ok sorry, I went a little bit off topic. So if the Earth is full of fossils that pass the age when it was created as it was said in the bible, one of those clearly must be wrong. Judging what Bible really is nowadays, you can see that it is not what it was when it was created. Even though the first Bible was written down, how many times was it simply destroyed, or retold from person to person. We have no conclusive evidence that the oldest Bible is the correct version. First of all, the translation could be wrong. Number two, the oldest Bible we have is not the original. Number three, it's not true. And does anybody here wonder why different Christian establishments use DIFFERENT versions of the Bible? The most preserved religious writing is the Qu'ran because it was never translated and was created during the age when things were quickly written down. Also ,don't forget, humans are not perfect and have a tendency to exaggerate.

Now let's take a look at it's events. Garden of Eden- A snake gets those two to eat a forbidden fruit. That would not be possible simply because a snake has no larynx or vocal chords and can only produce a hissing sound.
Noah's Ark- Even though the story repeats itself many times over different cultures it would not be possible because for that to happen, it would have to rain at the rate of 44ft/hr.

What's the conclusion we receive from this? The Bible is an assortment of "stories" that are used to put the people on the righteous path to go to heaven and save their soul. The Bible teaches valuable lessons, that if everyone followed would make the world a very good place to live in. I personally have no objections with the commandments such as do not steal or kill.

Now if we look at creation from science's standpoint, we clearly see what they think happened. Over billions of years, life emerged in prokaryotic cells, which later evolved into organelles that make up the eukaryotic cells we are made up from. Those cells evolved and combined into more complex organisms. Those organisms were either wiped out forever or adjusted and lived as time moved on. Then the organisms became diverse, and adaptive radiation kicked in. Adaptive radiation is a concept that one species becomes an origin for many of others to come. Evolution is just constant adaptation and struggle for life. You can clearly see a process called co-evolution in plants and insects. Plants adjust so the insects can eat them and insects find ways to bypass that in order to survive. Co-evolution is simply survival of the fittest. But then people look at Darwin, creator of study of evolution as we know it and some hate him. They hate him because he said that we come from monkeys. DNA testing proved that we are similar to monkeys. That cannot be disproved. The only important question science has no answer to is why some monkeys evolved and others didn't. What triggered that event? We may never know.

I am eagerly waiting for replies.

Don't take the Bible so literally. Many Christians believe a lot of the stories are just metaphors or exaggerations of a truth, a practice common in Rabbinic teachings.

Og · 03-14-2007, 12:13 PM

The stories are obviously metaphors. For very deep meanings about what it means to be human. They are not literal accounts of events. They do not speak to the afterlife, they speak to LIFE NOW. That is what eternal life is and that is what it means whenever it is used.

Quote:

What's the conclusion we receive from this? The Bible is an assortment of "stories" that are used to put the people on the righteous path to go to heaven and save their soul. The Bible teaches valuable lessons, that if everyone followed would make the world a very good place to live in. I personally have no objections with the commandments such as do not steal or kill.

There is no need to "save their soul." Humans are as we are and the soul is a myth (metaphor) just like the biblical stories. The idea of Soul speaks to the behavior of a massively complex network of neurons and the interactions between entities that are combinations of these neurons. Soul is an ILLUSION. That doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. It means that it's describing something else than you think it does.

THEWAULRUS · 03-14-2007, 01:52 PM

Well there are many Christian Establishments that do take it that seriously.That's using science to disprove the Bible's greatest stories. As to Og...It doesn't really matter that you can't save your soul because it's a metaphor. That is not what's so important. Saving your soul is doing good things. Now if the illusion of a soul makes you help the poor, who cares if such a thing as soul doesn't exist? If the person wants to believe in a soul and save it by doing good deeds, who are we to say he can't? Who are we to say that soul doesn't exist and thus prevent him from attempting to save his soul, both impossible tasks because those two concepts are just a myth?

Og · 03-14-2007, 02:14 PM

I'm not saying that its not a metaphor. I KNOW its a metaphor. I know its an illusion. As I said above, being an illusion doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. You just seemed to be using scientific reasoning to discredit and otherwise re-interpret many biblical ideas and stories. I was just doing the same.

It's just that "saving the soul" has been the cause of a lot of atrocity.

mark71 · 06-02-2007, 06:32 AM

yes but science has not being able to prove that God does not exist...science does not even know much about the universe...if science knows little about the universe then it does not know everything about the universe...so little it cannot disprove that God exists

Og · 06-02-2007, 08:00 AM

Quote:

yes but science has not being able to prove that God does not exist

Where a western god such as yaweh is concerned, yeah, science does have proof that he doesn't exist. His entire nature is based in an illusion. That of us having free will.

sisterX · 06-02-2007, 09:16 AM

You said science has proof where is the proof?