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No I don't have faith at all. I believe in the overwhelming amount of evidence that is available to us.
The same evidence is available to both sides, so the only difference is how you interpret it, and what you assume to be true before you begin. Let's face it, none of us was there to see it, so the best you can do is interpret the evidence, and since you have already made up your mind about the issue, there is no doubt which interpretation you will run with. The interpretation your scientists gave about the Java Man was embarrassingly incorrect, yet all evolutionists embraced it and hailed it as "indisputable proof of evolution" and "the missing link". Until it was proven false of course.
Don't say you don't have faith. To believe what you believe requires an enormous amount of faith in the scientists and their interpretations of the evidence. The problem is that they have been wrong before, and they'll be wrong again, and the mathematical probability of evolution succeeding is practically a zero, so you need a lot of faith to believe it anyway. So, whether you realize it or not, you are a man of faith, it's just a different kind of faith.
Last edited by Finn_Jarber; 01-01-2010 at 10:21 AM..
I'll dumb it down for you because it seems to be over your head. It probably won't sound grammatically correct because I have to make it so simple, but here goes....
Neither of us have PROOF. Meaning, that we have the same amount of proof. My point was you cannot prove evolution to me. BOTH TAKE FAITH.
There are lots of scientific studies, but they're all full of holes. Take evolution all the way back to the beginning of time, and you had to have SOMETHING first live....but you cannot answer that, therefore you have just as much proof as I have that God exists....read: NONE.
Couldn't dumb it down anymore than your usual posts, I can see.
Evolution is a proven scientific theory. It is, indeed, a fact, a fact supported by centuries of study and the basic scientific method.
You, on the other hand, have ZERO evidence to substantiate Creationism/ID, other than jesus-on-toast type of anologies.
The same evidence is available to both sides, so the only difference is how you interpret it, and what you assume to be true before you begin. Let's face it, none of us was there to see it, so the best you can do is interpret the evidence, and since you have already made up your mind about the issue, there is no doubt which interpretation you will run with. The interpretation your scientists gave about the Java Man was embarrassingly incorrect, yet all evolutionists embraced it and hailed it as "indisputable proof of evolution" and "the missing link". Until it was proven false of course.
Don't say you don't have faith. To believe what you believe requires an enormous amount of faith in the scientists and their interpretations of the evidence. The problem is that they have been wrong before, and they'll be wrong again. The mathematical probability of evolution succeeding is practically a zero, so you need a lot of faith to believe it anyway. So, whether you realize it or not, you are a man of faith, it's just a different kind of faith.
Evolution - Hundreds of thousands of hard physical evidence in the fossil record, including the so-called transitional species. Libraries full of hard DNA/RNA and dating data. Centuries of study and peer reviewed sciences and findings.
Creationism - an ancient text jammed-paced full of self-contradictions, historical innacuracies, and whose every muth and miracle are disproved making said ancient text nothing more than a poorly written fantasy novel.
Well, upon examining the evidence, any rational person can see that Evolution wins, hands down.
Yay for Evolution.
Merely denying plain reality in no way negates peer-reviewed sciences.
I don't disbelieve anything unless I can prove it DOES NOT exist. I cannot prove that God does not exist, so why bother trying to prove either way? It would be a useless investigation because there is no way I could possibly every prove or disprove something as abstract as GOD!
So then it must follow that you also believe in Odin, Thor, Ra, Horus, Zeus, and all the other gods that cannot be disproven, right?
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I am not a bible thumping church fanatic, but I do believe that all humans should be grateful for what they have, loving toward their friends/family/neighbors, and forgiving.
None of the above require church, religion or god. Those are basic humanist beliefs inherit to most people.
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You see, there is no way to prove creationism. There is also no way to disprove it.
Depends on what you mean by "creationism". Biblical creationism most certainly has been disproven. Just as pretty much all of the Bible has been.
However if you mean a generic, impersonal "higher power" may have created early life billions of years ago, then yes there is no way to prove or disprove that. Nor is there any need to, as its truth or untruth does not change science, evolution or the reality of the world we live in one bit.
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And if you want to get very abstract, there is also no way to prove or disprove evolution
On the contrary, evolution has been successfully proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. All evidence (mountains of evidence) backs it up.
You're spending an awful lot of time and effort getting worked up over something that doesn't exist to you.
You've provided just as much proof as I have....none. I'm just stating that you have faith in evolution, but cannot prove it.
You're fighting that for some reason, but at the same time, you're not fighting it with proof.
The whole point of this is that you are SO sure that God doesn't exist and that evolution is responsible for us being where we're at, but you have nothing more than a "religion" based on one man's studies, which are full of holes.
I'm not going to go through the trouble of citing specific studies because you won't listen to anything. It's not worth my time. I believe that there is a God. You BELIEVE that there isn't. You don't know it though. You can't.
Whether you admit it or not, you know in your heart that you have FAITH that the evolutionary process occurred, but you can't prove it. Until you can prove all the links in the evolutionary process, and can tell me when the first life form started and how, you have nothing.
Except faith.
Admit it or not, you have faith in something. But no proof.
There you go again, how predictable. Not one of my questions answered, NOT ONE! Just more "You can't prove it ....nah nah nah nah".
Try the questions again.
What are your qualifications in the field that lead you to conclude that by far the majority of highly qualified scientists have all been duped?
Do you deny the fossil/Geological column?
Give us your scholarly, academic thoughts on why you think life MUST have started somewhere or why the Universe MUST have been created. You are quite happy to believe that your god had no beginning and has always existed so why do you think that the Universe could not be the same?
Do you accept that that the gods of other religions could exist?
DO believe in mermaids?
Examples of things that exist that have not been proven please.
Evolution - Hundreds of thousands of hard physical evidence in the fossil record, including the so-called transitional species. Libraries full of hard DNA/RNA and dating data. Centuries of study and peer reviewed sciences and findings.
I hate to repeat it, but the same evidence is available to both sides, and the only difference is how you interpret the evidence.
Libraries full of DNA? Where did the DNA come from?
How do you know the scientists used the correct methods in their study? Many previously accepted methods have been found to be incorrect, and the conclusions based on them had to tossed out, or should be tossed out. Huge errors have been made with Carbon-14 dating method, because it relies on assumption that carbon always ages at the same speed. However that was found out to be not true, because aging of carbon depends on the surroundings. Also, it assumes that the concentration of carbon-12 in atmosphere, which affects the decay of carbon-14 has always been constant, but that has also been proven incorrect, because there has been HUGE variations in carbon-12. Many scientists agree that the method is only accurate to the last 3000 years.
Often when fossils are found and carbon dated, the scientists had estimated the age to be millions of years old, but when the test results arrive, they show only a few thousand years. These results are usually thrown out and disqualified because of "contamination". This is called the "human bias" factor in carbon dating, because the results were correct, but the scientists could not accept them because it would contradict with their assumptions, and it would disprove their theory. There is also proof of scientists running ten tests on carbon dating on same evidence and throw away nine results because they show the age to be only a few thousand years, but they keep the 10th one because it says 90 000 years, which is close to their original assumption. Human bias runs deep in these studies because the scientists have already made up their minds and will not allow truth to prove them wrong.
The funniest example came from Hawaii where a scientists carbon dated a shell to be 2000 years old, when it was brand new.
Half of the results are rejected
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<B>Perhaps the best description of the problem in attempting to use the Carbon-14 dating method is to be found in the words of Dr. Robert Lee. In 1981, he wrote an article for the Anthropological Journal of Canada, in which stated:
"The troubles of the radiocarbon dating method are undeniably deep and serious. Despite 35 years of technological refinement and better understanding, the underlying assumptions have been strongly challenged, and warnings are out that radiocarbon may soon find itself in a crisis situation. Continuing use of the method depends on a fix-it-as-we-go approach, allowing for contamination here, fractionation there, and calibration whenever possible. It should be no surprise then, that fully half of the dates are rejected. The wonder is, surely, that the remaining half has come to be accepted…. No matter how useful it is, though, the radiocarbon method is still not capable of yielding accurate and reliable results. There are gross discrepancies, the chronology is uneven and relative, and the accepted dates are actually the selected dates.”
Proof is an odd thing. Philosophically, "being" is its own proof. Evolution and creation are ideas and have "being" as ideas so both "are." The "material" world around us has being, so it "is" and that needs no proof. Your concept of it is a mental representation, so that concept "is" so it has (mental) being as well. I suppose the big question is, does your concept, which "is", match up with what "is" outside of your concept. Neither concept, evolution/creation, can be proven "absolutely" as the evolution concept, as concept, will continually change until one day it is replaced-it is not real "out there", but a concept. Creationism will have to wait until its all over (but it will continually "evolve {HAHA}"). Both concepts are built on rational structures that reinforce the concept, if this were not so then you wouldn't have the concept. People who say religion is irrational are really dumb because it also needs rational structures for its concepts, or it would not be able to construct them, but since it has them, they "are". Because these are rational structures they are merely representations of what is thought to be "real" and are prone to "leakage" or dialectics-because of the difference between the real and idea. Which means that the adherents must continually scramble to plug the holes in the rational structures of their ideas. That is why our age is characterized by such a desperate struggle for the supremacy of some idea and the annihilation of the others. Its a lot of work, so just remove the risk (reminds me of a joke-Stalin once said, man with a problem, no more man, no more problem!). To have a match between these representations and their opposite "reality" is beyond both. One woulds have to have the totality of cosmos facts at hand and then one would still only be interpreting them. You believe in either one of these not because either contains some "absolute" truth (concept is "one" with the transcendent reality {only available by concept, by the way, unless you are one with the object}, no distinction between the two) that your genius (believe me, you are not "absolutely" smart) recognizes, but because in your mind, the structure that you are now accepting has some plausibility for you (premise=a=b=c=d=e=etc or a premise composed of a=b=etc is = to A=B=Etc) but more than likely it is mixed with bias, movies, music, your dad beat you, you wanted to have sex with your mom, etc: how you originally acquired a premise is anybody's guess but most think it was because one thinks oneself to be such an independent genius. These rational structures might be equated or related to what might be called discourse. Science has its own discourse and religion has its own;discourse is how one sees or the rules for interpreting "reality". The problem for modernity (and we in it) is that life is composed of many types of discourse. If science discourse was like religion (as it was a long time ago) you would not have science; same with religion. Both make up the culture you are in as discourse is what makes the distinction in the social system between the subsystems (economics, religion, military, etc). To ask for scientific proof of a religious dogma is an attempt to bring it into science, which means to destroy it, as it is not scientific discourse and to make evolution a dogma rather than a theory is an attempt to move it into religion and destroy it as scientific discourse (this is why both sides of this debate have actually switched sides!). Religious discourse operates by its own rules just as science does. To disprove creation, one has to have the dialog take place in theological discourse just as evolution will change or be eliminated in scientific discourse (the big problem here is that a lot of people don't want to give up their investments in these ideas so change is slow). Given all this, it may be interesting, rather than this worn debate, to interpret the world, or its beginning, from other discourse; such as economic, or legal, etc. I once read an article where capital punishment was analyzed economically rather than ethically or some other discourse and it was refreashing.
The same evidence is available to both sides, so the only difference is how you interpret it, and what you assume to be true before you begin. Let's face it, none of us was there to see it, so the best you can do is interpret the evidence, and since you have already made up your mind about the issue, there is no doubt which interpretation you will run with.
Balderdash! It has nothing to do with "interpretation" and everything to do with what can be verified. Give us your views on the fossil column.
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The interpretation your scientists gave about the Java Man was embarrassingly incorrect, yet all evolutionists embraced it and hailed it as "indisputable proof of evolution" and "the missing link". Until it was proven false of course.
So because one dude tried to pull a fast one that discredits every other scientist on the planet does it? If you want to talk "fakes", we could start another thread on the fakes of Christianity. How about the Shroud of Turin, the splinters of the cross, finger bones of priests, the foreskin of Jesus and hundreds more? How about the "fakes" of Ron Wyatt? Don't start calling "fakes" dude 'cause you're going to loose that one when it comes to the fakes perpetrated by "Christians".
...and btw, who was it that disclosed fakes like Java Man......science.
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Don't say you don't have faith. To believe what you believe requires an enormous amount of faith in the scientists and their interpretations of the evidence.
No it doesn't. When many different scientists using many different methods and many different kinds of complex scientific equipment are all coming up with the same results it's a pretty safe bet that they are right.
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The problem is that they have been wrong before, and they'll be wrong again,..............
Undoubtedly they will. The difference between scientists and theists is that when scientific findings are proven to contain errors, scientists, unlike theist, don't cover their ears, stamp their feet and scream 'not true, not true, I'm not listening, you're being blinded by Satan'.
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.... and the mathematical probability of evolution succeeding is practically a zero, so you need a lot of faith to believe it anyway. So, whether you realize it or not, you are a man of faith, it's just a different kind of faith.
You can spew your nonsense about faith until the cows come home but it won't change the fact that evolution is verifiable and objective. In other words, it is proven beyond reasonable doubt. No faith is required.
So because one dude tried to pull a fast one that discredits every other scientist on the planet does it?
It was not a fast-one, because he truly believed in it, and so did everyone else. It was a perfect example of what human bias does to science. The scientists were so conceived that found what they had believed existed, that they built an entire creature around a human leg bone and a piece of a bone from an ape's skull, thinking they came from the same creature.
The Java Man is not the only such example. Many, if not most "missing link" creatures are constructed from small pieces of bone and the remaining 90% of the model is a product of the scientist's imagination.
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