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My point is that science is constantly proving itself wrong, and 100 years from now many scientific notions of today will be recognized as patently false.
That's why science manages to cure disease, create computers, increase crop yields and put people into space... and religion does not. It is self correcting.
I get a big kick out of the nut-burger belief that science's greatest strength is a somehow actually a weakness.
There is not one verifiable instance of evolution. Not one. None. Nota.
Even the Institute for Creation Research disagrees with you. In fact, their entire explanation for how all the animals got on Noah's Ark demands a vast amount of evolution to have occurred after the flood.
Wow, so much there in such a short paragraph.First, if you are assuming that my arguments are based on creationism, you haven't been paying very close attention, as I have made that point abundantly clear that they are not. Secondly, such an overtly biased prejudice regarding your perceived poor reputation of creationists is not very objective, nor reasonable, since it assumes that ALL creationists believe the exact same things. Just like evolutionists have differences of opinions relative to evolution as a whole theory, suffice it to say that the same can be said of creationists ... and even more differences (dramatic) between creationism and ID.
I think an overtly biased prejudice is warranted for us laypersons, in the interest of saving time. If 5,000 videos on Youtube tell of evidence for creationism, and all of these videos are flawed because the video creator has a clear lack of critical thinking skills, I'm going to pretty much skip over any source with the world Bible in it. But yes, it's not objective. I think, as a result, creationists have a duty to be more patient and clear when explaining their views to atheists, than atheists have a duty to when explaining their views to creationists.
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That said, moving on, I will grant you the benefit of the doubt here about your misunderstanding (rather than assume a deliberate distortion) of my point about "at least creationist have and explanation ....". I made the statement in the context of fraudulent claims that evolution disproved creation when it doesn't even address the point of origin of life. Creationists do offer an explanation, while evolution does not. Far from crap ... it is simply a true statement, and at the risk of the dreaded "penalty box" you'll have evolved into a fossil long before I retract. The main point of my entire position is encapsulated in that accurate statement .. that point being that evolution cannot "disprove" something that it doesn't even address ... that being the "origin of living matter"
I'll agree that evolution cannot disprove something it does address, and that evolutionary theory, from what I understand of it, does not disprove a creator.
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Furthermore, I did no such thing as you suggest about the "I don't know" answer. For crying out lound man ... make some bloody sense ... think beforw reacting. The question of "how did life come into existence" is the question ... of course the creationist answer is God, and not "I don't know". And I haven't addressed what an atheist might answer when posed that question, for all I know the answer might be "who cares".
Forgive me. Your exact statement was the following:
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Yes, you understand what I'm saying correctly. I would add that I see no mutual exclusive conflict between creation and evolution. That's really the point I was driving at. And to be frank, even the Catholic Church has made such statements. It has suggested that life can and was created, and that evolution can and has occurred. The most dogmatic mindset among the two sides seems to come from atheists who have adopted evolution as a weapon against any idea of a God existing. It seems that their irrational hatred of just the idea that there could be a creator, leads them to make so many false claims.
I myself lean toward "Intelligent Design" rather than purely religious based creation theory, because of the options, ID seems the most plausible, and the least dogmatic. ID suggests that the complexities we can see and measure, all of the basic signs of design and purpose exists. ID does not claim who or what might be responsible for the design, but only that the common characteristics of design exists.
I believe that ID offers the only honest answer to the question of the origin of living matter ... "we don't know".
You seem to be implying that atheists are sure there is no creator, but creationists are not sure. That is not the definition of atheism.
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The operative point was, tying back to the evolutionists claim of disproving creation without actually addressing the most important point ... the orgin of life ... was that those within evolutionists circles should do as the Intelligent Design crowd does in response to that question, which can only be legitimately answered as "I don't know"!!! But that's not what evolutionists do ... what they do, by direct insinuation in claiming to disprove creation is to answer that question "we don't address the origin of life, but we are certain that it wasn't created".
I assume you're talking about what you see as the bulk of evolutionists, and you're saying that most evolutionists do this. I don't know whether that's true or not.
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I think if one desires to formulate an informed opinion, then learning about both sides is essential. Certainly, one should at least become familiar with the basics of their own accepted theory before blindly accepting it based on a perception of fault of another opinion. That doesn't make the slight bit of sense. As for the spinning and vomiting, that makes even less sense, and I have no idea what your point was.
If someone spins and vomits, they probably lack the critical thinking skills to realize that the short term benefits of the pleasant feeling of dizziness are not worth the longer term disadvantages of the negative feeling of puking on the floor and feeling unpleasant. The large number of people who believe a god must exist also express poor critical thinking skills.
I'm working on learning about your side. That's why I asked you about it.
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I would start by looking on YouTube .. I've seen a few very good animated videos of the DNA replication process ... there are similar videos on the functions of living cells, and of cell division.
That will keep you busy for a while, and time well spent. Then you'll be able to discuss the matter in more depth, and understand the answers to questions, even if you don't agree with them. Of course, that requires a lot of work and thinking ... which a number of folks apparently find to much of a burden.
Or, you could just take the easy path, continue operating under false perceptions, and misunderstanding, and cast insults. Your choice ... it's a free country and you have a right to remain blissfully uninformed, or embrace the purpose of your life which is to learn and grow!.
Of course you have, You have quoted sources that shared or described your same false opinion.
I quoted sources from UW-Madison and Lehigh University. It is a matter of fact that ID is not creationism, some narrow-minded court's opinion notwithstanding. Several theories abound that the intelligent designer(s) have nothing whatsoever to do with religion or any deity.
The courts once considered slavery legal, too. Of course, you would have been right on board with that considering your propensity to be told what to think.
That would be right only for the willfully ignorant. Anyone with interest or intelligence is perfectly capable of actually assessing the evidence and reasoning and reach the relevant conclusions for themselves. And we know for a fact that those who actually do that overwhelmingly agree with what is currently the scientific consensus. That's how it became the consensus in the first place.
I won't waste time responding to rhetorical drivel, which defines the majority of your contribution to discussions.
But critical thinking is a subject you of all people should not be offering advice. I know you have a few groopies who are impressed by your rhetorical tango, but they're probably taking a nap.
Consensus opinion means squat! Truth is not a democratic process, except in a room full of liberals.
As for reaching one's own conclusions, based on assessing evidence ... exactly when have you ever done that? All I hear outta you is "consensus" opinion ... incessantly.
Now either this consensus is unlike every other consensus throughout history who have ultimately been proven wrong more often than not, or you are just another one of the followers whose chances of being correct are way less than 50/50.
You can go on fooling yourself into believing that you actually do manage an original thought occasionally, but I've seen no evidence of it.
To hear you tell it, the consensus is always right!! And you call yourself HistorianDude. How Orwellian. History indeed shows that consensus opinion is more often wrong than right.
What was the name of that biologist who was ridiculed and locked away in a mental institution for trying to convince the members of the Royal Accademy of Medicine that they were endangering their patients by not washing their hands?
What a crazy idea ...tiny germs ..... off you go to the room with padded walls!
That's what you can always expect from a large group of self annointed experts, whose true expertise seems to be the faultless ability of convincing each other that they are always right, so long as they all agree to be right. That's the true nature of consensus opinion, and boy old boy, have you got a surprise waiting for you if you choose to enter a room filled with experts and try to tell them they are wrong about something! You're not likely to be successful in convincing them.
And this is the basis for that old axiom, "if everybody is thinking the same thing, somebody isn't thinking!". Consensus isn't thinking ... critically or otherwise ... it's just agreeing.
So much concentrated dumbth in a single post. I will respond to only a single one.
Identical endogenous retroviruses can only be shared by descendants of a common ancestor.
Humans and chimpanzees share identical endogenous retroviruses.
This is as close as anything in science to absolute proof that humans and chimpanzees descend from a common ancestor.
End of story.
Also, when the poster writes that many species of dog can interbreed, I suspect he means "breeds of dog" rather than species (domestic dogs such as poodles and terriers are not different species). But it's true that different species and subspecies of Canini can interbreed - domestic dogs and coyotes, domestic dogs and wolves, etc.
However, the comparison fails because humans and chimps aren't species of the same genus. They are of the same family Hominidae, which is a higher classification than genus. Humans are a singular species of the genus Homo. We aren't the same genus as chimps, orangutans, or gorillas.
In the dog world, what animal shares the same family in a similar way to humans being of the same family as chimps? Foxes. But dogs and wolves cannot interbreed with foxes.
As you demonstrated, "relatedness" goes beyond an ability to breed between the two.
Charles Darwin is the originator of the theory of evolution.
Do you even read what you type before you submit it as a post?
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Originally Posted by Bideshi
I nominate this as the most absurd post of the thread.
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Originally Posted by Bideshi
"On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life" Charles Darwin
The legitimacy of Darwin's speculations were gravely doubted by Darwin himself.
Again, what does Darwin have to do with evolution in 2014? Nothing Darwin said or believed invalidates evolution as Darwin didn't have the knowledge or.technology to know what we know. Lets talk genetics instead of Darwin.
This is true ... and I would suggest that no explanation is more honest than a contrived one which contradicts basic common sense. In fact, false explanations are dangerously worse. Convincing people to accept nonsensical explanations is an assault on the human consciousness.
How so? Well, given the choice of human beings being spiritual eternal beings inhabiting a physical body, or simply accidents created from random mutations of lower life forms, having no purpose other than to exist, then die, game over ... with no real meaning to that existence, do you see how the latter diminishes human value?
Do you think it beneficial to dismiss your value in such a manner, and agree that your life has no real meaning or purpose? And should this be the message drummed into the heads of impressionable children ... that they have no value, and are just accidents of nature?
I think that is a horrific message, as well as being a lie.
Life without a creator has no value to you. That doesn't mean it doesn't have value to others.
However, I agree that certain forms of deism, pantheism, agnosticism, and other religions can be uplifting (although I have no personal experience with religious views other than pantheism, atheism, agnosticism, and deism). That's why I don't attempt to go out of my way to spread atheism. I don't tell people I'm an atheist unless they ask or the conversation leads to it. I didn't like it when Richard Dawkins suggested mocking theists in public.
I tend to be sympathetic to many militant atheists though. They see dangers they're trying to stop, to protect their friends and families and society, just like Ken Ham does (except Ken Ham is wrong).
That's all pretty much irrelevant to what, appears to me, to be most accurate though, at this moment in time.
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None of us know how old the earth is, nor how old modern humans are, nor what preceded us. We only know what we've been told, and what we've accepted as the truth. Nothing more, nothing less. Right?
I can conceptualize the possibility that extinction events occur periodically, given our knowledge of glacial periods which last for vast periods of time, followed by briefer periods of interglacials conducive to the support of life. While the earth itself may be hundreds of millions or even billions of years old, historical accounts of human population of this earth may run in cycles with those climate cycles, and accounts of earth being 18,000 years old may be just an account of that most recent cycle .... not a literal birthdate of the rock we call home, but just the the birthdate of the human inhabitants since the last extinction event.
That's just one speculation. But it's far more reasonable than a single cell mutating into everything that is and ever was living on this planet.
I'm going to skip this part because I don't know that much about science
Last edited by Clintone; 01-14-2014 at 01:19 PM..
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