# Evolution or Creation?



## Mferko

this thread started here http://www.bcaquaria.com/forum/aqua-lounge-7/stupid-people-piss-me-off-12974/index3.html wasnt meant to be a huge argument cpool just posted a quote that reminded me of this one



cpool said:


> Hey guys I thought this would be appropriate for this it is called the Eulogy for common sense, it is great:
> 
> "Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, COMMON SENSE, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as: knowing when to come in out of the rain; why the early bird gets the worm;; life isn't always fair, and maybe it was my fault.
> 
> Common Sense lived by simple sound financial policies such as : don't spend more than you can earn and reliable strategies such as adults, not children are in charge.
> 
> His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of a 6-year old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate, teens suspended from school for using mouth wash after lunch, and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition.
> 
> Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disiplining their unruly children.
> 
> It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or an aspirin to a student, but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.
> 
> Common Sense lost the will to live as the churches became businesses, and criminals received better treatment than their victims.
> 
> Common Sense took a beating when you couldn't defend yourself from a burglar in your own home, and the burglar could sue you for assault.
> 
> Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little on her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.
> 
> Common Sense was preceded in death, by his parents, Truth and Trust. His wife, Discretion, his daughter, Responsibility, his son Reason.
> 
> He is survived by his 4 stepbrothers; I Know My Rights: I Want It Now, Someone Else is To Blame, and I'm A Victim.
> 
> Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone. If you still remember him, pass this on. If not, join the majority and do nothing.


hehe thats a good one, reminds me of this:

There is a name to describe the disorder that a large portion of the human race suffers from who have the mindset NOT to believe in evolution and by default science; Spectacularly Ignorant Syndrome (SIS).
SIS is a state of mind that affects an extraordinary number of humans worldwide, which, in certain rare cases, CAN be treated successfully with a good dose of education and evidence.
Sadly though, history shows that the vast majority of SIS sufferers are untreatable, as they suffer from a secondary condition known as; They Don't Understand That They Don't Understand Syndrome (TDU/2).
Humans that suffer from both SIS and TDU/2 syndromes are a lost cause, everywhere, and are very dangerous.
Their outward symptoms normally give them up quickly though because as the evidence shows, if you have a disagreement with a sufferer of SIS + TDU/2 syndrome, you will quickly see the characteristics of vitriol, spite, intimidation, character assassination or worse still if it's real world, be threatened with loss of liberty or life by violence at their hand, or from whatever; knife, sword, gun, bomb or thermo nuclear device happens to be on hand (one day).
SIS + TDU/2 Syndromes, as well as; greed, jealousy, envy, racism, bigotry and Napoleon complex syndromes (& others), are just two more of the many conditions that mother nature has encoded into our DNA to ensure that the recipe for conflict and self destruction of the human race is in no way lacking in rich ingredients. Mother Nature? May the force be with you.



cpool said:


> Interesting, well chaulk me up as one who has SIS, and to be truthful, I think people who believe in evolution are not the sharpest, but i have done my reserach and will not be swayed from my finding. I guess that means I have TDUX2 as well. Man I guess I should see a doctor, LOL!


nah just a biology professor, although doctors obviously know their bio and could probably help too 
actually theres a really fascinating book out called the greatest show on earth: the evidence for evolution, has lots of really interesting examples in there, i highly recommend it. there will be no disputing evolution once you have


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## 2wheelsx2

*Evolution or Religion?*



Mferko said:


> actually theres a really fascinating book out called the greatest show on earth: the evidence for evolution, has lots of really interesting examples in there, i highly recommend it. there will be no disputing evolution once you have


That's just one view. The only way that evolution is indisputable is if one were to actually record it all happening. Mutation is indisputable at this point in time, evolution is not. In 10,000 years, maybe.


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## Mferko

2wheelsx2 said:


> That's just one view. The only way that evolution is indisputable is if one were to actually record it all happening. Mutation is indisputable at this point in time, evolution is not. In 10,000 years, maybe.


wrong  evolution has been documented and major changes have happened in as little as 37 years
read the book. there are lizards (P. sicula) they moved from one island to another in croatia and when they went back 37 years later not only had they flattened their teeth and developed stronger jaw muscles for chewing plant material (they were mainly insect eaters on the first island), they even started to evolve an area in their stomach to house bacteria that break down cellulose (caecal valve) look up the lizards of pod mrcaru.
its not the lack of records, its the lack of people acknowledging the records, or trying to say they are false because they go against their beliefs.

if thats not enough look up Lenski's work on E coli, they cultured 12 'tribes' of e coli over 45 thousand generations. all tribes were provided with glucose as a limiting nutrient which e coli can utilize as well as citrate which it cannot, after the 33rd thousand generation one of the tribes evolved the ability to utilize citrate

these are just 2 examples, there are others too like guppies and of course mbuna, the reason mbuna were the first species i kept


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## 2wheelsx2

That's mutation. As a geologist, I don't have the same view as biologist. If you study the scientific literature based on geologic fossil records, and not just one book, you will see my viewpoint.

Most people also don't account for the curvature of the earth in their calculation of distance, nor geologic time in global climate change.

Same as the asteroid theory for the extinction of dinosaurs. TV shows sensationalize it as fact when in fact it's theory.

Anyway, we can agree to disagree, as this is not an evolution forum. But the fact that some people think evolution is a fact doesn't make it one. Empirical observation doesn't make it science. What happened in that 37 years? If this took place in a lab and was documented as the change occurred, I'd concede the point.

Based on evolution *theory*, we shouldn't have found any coelacanths.


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## Mferko

we do not descend from coelacanths we share a common ancestor, 
"a scientific theorum has not been - cannot be - proved in the way a mathematical theorem is proved, But common sense treats it as a fact in the same sense as the 'theory' that the earth is round and not flat is a fact, and the theory that green plants obtain energy from the sun is a fact. All are scientific theorums: supported by massive quantities of evidence, accepted by all informed observers, undisputed facts in the ordinary sense of the word. as with all facts, if we are going to be pedantic, it is undeniably possible that our measuring instruments, and the sense organs with which we read them, are the victims of a massive confidence trick. as Bertrand russel said, 'we may all have come into existence five minutes ago, provided with ready-made memories, with holes in our socks and hair that needed cutting.' Given the evidence now available, for evolution to be anything other than a fact would require a similar confidence trick by the 'creator.' something that few theists would wish to credit."
-Richard Dawkins


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## Mferko

2 books people should read, first is the greatest show on earth; the evidence for evolution
second is the evolution of god
im not anti religious by any means, we would not have made it past the hunter gatherer stage without it, i just dont think science should be considered false because someone who lived in the bronze age thought he had all the answers.

after all one of the best things about scientific facts is that you don't have to believe in them for them to be true


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## TomC

2wheelsx2 said:


> Based on evolution *theory*, we shouldn't have found any coelacanths.


 Why is that?


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## Mferko

im curious too, i hope its not the same logic as "since we came from monkeys there shouldnt be monkeys anymore"


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## TomC

Mferko said:


> im curious too, i hope its not the same logic as "since we came from monkeys there shouldnt be monkeys anymore"


 Exactly. I am of French descent, but France is still full of Frenchmen.


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## Nanokid

we cant debate evolution... we don't have enough evidence. sure mutations happen, and by theory it makes sense.. but at what point does a mutation become a species? sure some fish (stickleback) have developed differently to survive in different conditions. Google Image Result for http://ecology.nottingham.ac.uk/stickleback.jpg

one could say its a genetic mutation , others could say its evolution.


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## Mferko

Nanokid said:


> we cant debate evolution... we don't have enough evidence. sure mutations happen, and by theory it makes sense.. but at what point does a mutation become a species? sure some fish (stickleback) have developed differently to survive in different conditions. Google Image Result for http://ecology.nottingham.ac.uk/stickleback.jpg
> 
> one could say its a genetic mutation , others could say its evolution.


and those who took biology would say that the genetic mutation resulted in another genotype, which resulted in evolution by natural selection.
natural selection needs something to work on, mutations provide those variations.

in regards to when one species becomes another, a species is "the major subdivision of a genus or subgenus, regarded as the basic category of biological classification, composed of related individuals that resemble one another, are able to breed among themselves, but are not able to breed with members of another species."

as an example lions and tigers are different species because even though you can cross them and create a liger, ligers themselves cannot reproduce

as for the evidence there is plenty, try picking up the book i mentioned earlier in the thread its awesome, here is a preview: http://books.google.ca/books?id=CQdDhIgKM4UC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false


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## Momobobo

Could somebody explain to me how exactly we have all these variations if it wern't for the Theory of Evolution? (In other words, what's the arguement for just "creation"?)


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## Keri




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## effox

keri said:


>


lmao......


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## Krashy_Cichlids

All mferko is providing are examples of what is called micro evolution, which can be proven. If a lizard has a mutation which allows natural selection to work on you may come up with a different lookin lizard over many years, but it is still a lizard. I would like to see an example of a lizard turning into a bird, which is how evolutionists think birds came about. If anyone can prove that u are a genius. I have taken many university courses on ichthyology, herpitology, ornithology and such, and it has only strengthened my belief in creation. Even Darwin said he was all wrong before he died.


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## gmachine19

Don't you think those lizards adapted instead of evolving?


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## katienaha

heres how it goes...
-we run around as incompetent apes. 
-aliens come in from outer space and modify our genes to make us better. 
-aliens have us mine gold to save their atmosphere. in return, we make them gods and we build pyramids and temples and easter island heads to worship them. (i watch ancient aliens WAY too much...)
- we forget, we carry on, and continue on our merry genetically modified way. aliens are happy, we are happy. 
- we and other animals continue to evolve AND adapt to surroundings as they change. 

wham, bam, thank you ma'am.


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## qyrus

Feathered dinosaur - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Just wondering, what did you learn in university that reinforced your belief in creationism?


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## gklaw

Hey Katiena:

Where and what does aliens evolve from? Lower life form like us


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## jenle

I believe in evolution but I also believe that it was guided by God.


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## gklaw

If one must juxtapose "evolutionism" against "creationism", then I must say that both need faith. I.e. trusting in something we cannot totally prove, something we cannot see.

To those who could not find the faith to believe in a creator, there is little choice but to put their faith in evolution or believe in nothing.

To those who find evolutionism not credible, they could choose to believe in a creator or believing again in nothing at all.

So it is our personal choice to put our faith in: (1) in evolution, (2) in a creator, or (3) in nothing at all.

Adaptation, mutation, micro-evolution whatever we may name them are not evidence against the possibility of a creator. An almighty creator can freely choose to create by whatever means he/she pleases to. 

Implicit in this discussion is the debate of the Biblical account: Are human being specially created and intimated connected to their creator or are they just like all other animals, the mere products of chance and probabilities?

Just my humble opinion and hope to point out what is implicit in the discussion. By no mean trying to turn this into a religious debate forum.


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## Mferko

you dont need to put faith in science, are we living in the bible belt here? the fact that you said that is infuriating tbqh

faith - belief that is not based on proof: "He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact."

we have LOTS of proof that substantiates evolution, some people are just too brainwashed to go out and find it, and when its right in front of their face ie the links i provided on the previous page, they refuse to read the FACTS because it goes against their FAITH

no, you dont need faith in science, faith is what religious people use to ignore science.

and btw evolution is evidence against a creator, nothing starts complex, everything comes from simple beginnings
and even if you did believe in the silly fairy tale about adam and eve, wouldnt you need to believe in evolution to explain all the different races and creed's of people coming from those 2?


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## Mferko

Krashy_Cichlids said:


> All mferko is providing are examples of what is called micro evolution, which can be proven. If a lizard has a mutation which allows natural selection to work on you may come up with a different lookin lizard over many years, but it is still a lizard. I would like to see an example of a lizard turning into a bird, which is how evolutionists think birds came about. If anyone can prove that u are a genius. I have taken many university courses on ichthyology, herpitology, ornithology and such, and it has only strengthened my belief in creation. Even Darwin said he was all wrong before he died.


the only way those courses reinforced creation was if you failed them or took them at liberty university

lets throw a word in front of it and then maybe it wont be true, theres no evolution, just "micro evolution"
please please please dont let it be true

btw birds did come from lizards 

Evolution - Biology . change in the gene pool of a population from generation to generation by such processes as mutation, natural selection, and genetic drift.

your saying that doesnt happen? that the man in the sky hypothesis makes much more sense to you?
that darwin thing is a lie btw
read the book preview on the last page


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## Mferko

qyrus said:


> Feathered dinosaur - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
> 
> Just wondering, what did you learn in university that reinforced your belief in creationism?


he learned about 3000 year old dinosaur bones, lmfao


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## TomC

Krashy_Cichlids said:


> Even Darwin said he was all wrong before he died.


 I would sure be interested to know where you got that idea.


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## katienaha

gklaw said:


> Hey Katiena:
> 
> Where and what does aliens evolve from? Lower life form like us


same way i believe all life occurs. By chance, and the right mix of ingredients, and time time time.

There is a scientist out there, I watched a documentary about him and his studies on evolution. (forgive me I do not remember his name) and he can pick down all the reasons that evolution is true. But, he clearly states in the documentary that he is religious and has every bit of faith that the world was created by God. Simply, because he has the faith. And 2 seconds later he will continue to tell you how trilobytes evolved to become the next amazing animal.


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## big_bubba_B

well im just wondering how everything started over and over as how everyting has been wiped out from big astroids . being microwaved from blue giants that shoot off mega amounts of gama radiation . so is it fluke everytime , i just have a hard time beleaving we all started from the ocean . and also how things have progreesed so fast was not long ago our cell phones were like walkie talkies and how the pyramids were made . how the aztech temples and the pyramids in egypt are both in the same formation . or those big drawings in south america how were they done they didnt have tape mesures back then .


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## Keri

Mferko said:


> he learned about 3000 year old dinosaur bones, lmfao


Jesus horses?


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## Mferko

listen to this: soooo funny




fast forward to 2:30 where the 8 year old boy hears the story of noahs ark


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## qyrus

big_bubba_B said:


> well im just wondering how everything started over and over as how everyting has been wiped out from big astroids...


Every major extinction had survivors (however few they may be), so it's not really starting over from scratch. Keep in mind the vast amount of time that has past on this planet and you can imagine how life can bounce back from the brink. All the ancient monuments were tackled in the same way we solve problems now, human ingenuity and intelligence. If you Google around you can find loads of experiments where people use technology available at a certain time period to create famous landmarks.

...Unless of course you believe advance aliens that can travel through million of light years to reach us needs us to draw lines in the sand to land their space ships


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## summit

Personally I am still undecided, but its something I often give thought to, and interests me immensly, my most recent thought is about foresight, humanity is the only one to have this, how would something like this evolve? 

I get the physical evolution, its more the mental evolution I have a hard time understanding, nor do I see any concrete proof of. Foresight is such a powerful thing that you would think other creatures would have evolved this by now as it can be life saving/changing which is the purpose of evolution to begin with.


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## Keri

That would be a very big boat indeed....


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## Mferko

summit said:


> Personally I am still undecided, but its something I often give thought to, and interests me immensly, my most recent thought is about foresight, humanity is the only one to have this, how would something like this evolve?
> 
> I get the physical evolution, its more the mental evolution I have a hard time understanding, nor do I see any concrete proof of. Foresight is such a powerful thing that you would think other creatures would have evolved this by now as it can be life saving/changing which is the purpose of evolution to begin with.


check this out: http://resources.metapress.com/pdf-preview.axd?code=r67476nlt1n57k41&size=largest
http://www.ted.com/talks/susan_savage_rumbaugh_on_apes_that_write.html

there are other powerful things too, after all, the only thing telling us that consciousness is so great is... consciousness

do you know what lima beans do when they are attacked by spider mites? they secrete a chemical that brings another kind of mite to come attack the spider mite, biochemistry can be a very powerful tool too


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## summit

Mferko said:


> there are other powerful things too, after all, the only thing telling us that consciousness is so great is... consciousness
> 
> do you know what lima beans do when they are attacked by spider mites? they secrete a chemical that brings another kind of mite to come attack the spider mite, biochemistry can be a very powerful tool too
> 
> there are however species that show a limited degree of foresight, check this out:
> Susan Savage-Rumbaugh on apes | Video on TED.com


True, but I see the benefits of biochemistry lacking when compared to foresight, to be honest nothing compares IMO, foresight gives us the ability to plan ahead, make our lives better, make choices based on the future, its not just a survivial mechanism. This is a huge advantage to other beings, much more so than any evolved defense mechanisms, as it can effect any and all facets of our daily life. I will check out the links, I don't have speakers at the moment as like I mentioned this stuff does interest me , but if evolution is indeed fact, then again why are we the only ones to develop foresight to the point we can use it? And at that, why at this point have we not evolved to use our foresight better than we do? Is there any other examples in evolution where one creature has a unique ability that none others have developed in the billions of years the planet has been around? I don't know, but can't think of any off the top of my head.

Like I said I lean to evolution, but I also keep an open mind as science is still in its infancy, and there is too much we have no clue about to say 100% one way or another. For every example of creationism gone wrong in our history, there is also examples of science gone wrong and needing to be revised as well, both can be wrong, its the human element in the equation that will always give us these variables so I don't know if this great question ever can be answered with 100% fact, as more answers will create more questions.


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## Mferko

we arent the only ones, even squirrels plan for the winter, and crows can fashion tools  im sure youl find the talk by susan savage very interesting, the other 2 links are just articles
i dont dispute that it gives us a huge advantage, we humans are doing very well for ourselves.

heres another great example of foresight


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## Mferko

this question session with professor dawkins is pretty funny imo, my uncle emailed it to me


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## summit

Mferko said:


> we arent the only ones, even squirrels plan for the winter, and crows can fashion tools  im sure youl find the talk by susan savage very interesting, the other 2 links are just articles
> i dont dispute that it gives us a huge advantage, we humans are doing very well for ourselves.
> 
> heres another great example of foresight
> YouTube - octopus uses coconut as armour
> 
> this vid is fantastic too, shows that were not so unique and examples of animals doing things that we think are unique to us, intro ends after 4:50
> YouTube - Class Day Lecture 2009: The Uniqueness of Humans


Its interesting, I will give you that, but at the same time they are all intincts built and developed from survival which can be argued whether that is true foresight or not, where with us humans it seems to go far far beyond that, which is why I remain skeptical and open minded to new developments on both sides of the fence. Heck for all we know both sides could be wrong and it may be something we have never even considered, nor have the capacity to understand, history has taught us that before in the early periods where the argument was between multiple gods and one god.


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## Mferko

summit said:


> Its interesting, I will give you that, but at the same time they are all intincts built and developed from survival which can be argued whether that is true foresight or not, where with us humans it seems to go far far beyond that, which is why I remain skeptical and open minded to new developments on both sides of the fence. Heck for all we know both sides could be wrong and it may be something we have never even considered, nor have the capacity to understand, history has taught us that before in the early periods where the argument was between multiple gods and one god.


basically, if the slightest bit of foresight benefited our ancestors, that trait was positively selected for, and over the millions upon millions of years of evolution it is refined and improved upon
the uniqueness of humans vid above also shows how chimps demonstrate theory of mind, which even us humans dont develop until about age four or five

in the same way that a single photoreceptor evolved into the eyeball Evolution of the eye - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
we can actually see all of these different stages in mollusks alone
Encyclopedia - Britannica Online Encyclopedia

everything comes from simple beginnings

check this out too, one of the best documented examples of evolution is in whales


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## bonsai dave

For any thing to evolve it frist has to be created. So in my opinion evolution and creation go hand in hand. Here is cool video on creation. enjoy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faRlFsYmkeY]YouTube - The Simpsons - Homer Evolution


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## Mferko

and scientists have already been able to "create" amino acids from inorganic material with electrical and ultraviolet stimuli to simulate the sun's rays and lightning, in fact we did this back in 1953!!
"Stanley Miller (b. 1930) was a doctoral student working with Urey at the University of Chicago, researching possible environments of early Earth. In 1953 he combined the ideas of Urey and Oparin in a short, simple experiment.

He reproduced the early atmosphere of Earth that Urey proposed by creating a chamber with only hydrogen, water, methane, and ammonia. To speed up "geologic time" in his experiment, he boiled the water and instead of exposing the mix to ultraviolet light he used an electric discharge something like lightning. After just a week, Miller had a residue of compounds settled in his system. He analyzed them and the results were electrifying: Organic compounds had been formed, most notably some of the "building blocks of life," amino acids. Amino acids are necessary to form proteins which themselves form the structure of cells and play important roles in the biochemical reactions life requires. Miller found the amino acids glycine, alanine, aspartic and glutamic acid, and others. Fifteen percent of the carbon from the methane had been combined into organic compounds. As amazing as discovering amino acids at all was how easily they had formed."

we've come along way since then we can do some astonishing things now




it can and did happen on its own


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## Mferko

here's a good wiki, lists most of the objections as well as the scientific evidence that refutes it
Objections to evolution - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
and if for some reason you feel still the evidence is lacking, go here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_evolution


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## gmachine19

I don't believe that being able to recreate amino acids and other compounds proves evolution. Sure you can recreate the materials but something has to happened in order for those materials to actually combine and form life. If evolution is true, why isn't there another life on other planets in our solar system? Let's take Mars for example. 

They found water there. One basic thing needed to live. Yet no one has actually been able to find any evidence that there was life there. If in fact, evolution is true, there should be life thriving there no matter how harsh the conditions in Mars is based on our own living conditions.


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## Mferko

seriously go to the above wiki, evolution is a fact and all the proof you need is there. its not about if its true, its true whether you believe it or not.


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## gmachine19

I don't believe in wiki. EVERYONE can edit it...And yes, I am reading it right now.


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## dZilla

gmachine19 said:


> I don't believe that being able to recreate amino acids and other compounds proves evolution. Sure you can recreate the materials but something has to happened in order for those materials to actually combine and form life. If evolution is true, why isn't there another life on other planets in our solar system? Let's take Mars for example.
> 
> They found water there. One basic thing needed to live. Yet no one has actually been able to find any evidence that there was life there. If in fact, evolution is true, there should be life thriving there no matter how harsh the conditions in Mars is based on our own living conditions.


People once believed that the sun revolved around the earth. The lack of evidence should not making something 'impossible.'

Didn't read the beginning of the thread, but I'm an atheist and as much as I want to believe that my hand is the shape it is, because of a banana evolving that way, or vice versa I don't. -- Sorry its a funny youtube clip with someone from Growing Pains, explaining why creationism is real.


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## Mferko

gmachine19 said:


> I don't believe in wiki. EVERYONE can edit it...And yes, I am reading it right now.


most of whats in that wiki is also in the book i mentioned earlier, the greatest show on earth: the evidence for evolution



dZilla said:


> People once believed that the sun revolved around the earth. The lack of evidence should not making something 'impossible.'
> 
> Didn't read the beginning of the thread, but I'm an atheist and as much as I want to believe that my hand is the shape it is, because of a banana evolving that way, or vice versa I don't. -- Sorry its a funny youtube clip with someone from Growing Pains, explaining why creationism is real.


exactly, and something being unprovable like the existence of a creator doesnt mean it is likely. just like the false religeons ie the invisible spaghetti monster that goes around falsifying carbon dating results, you cant disprove their existence, but they sure as heck arent likely

i think the funniest creationist clip ive seen on youtube is this one:


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## airbaggedmazda

clip says embedding is disabled


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## Mferko

airbaggedmazda said:


> clip says embedding is disabled


wierd, just click the underlined watch on youtube link i guess
its pretty funny, quote from the video "dinosaurs were giant reptiles that lived with adam and eve before the flood they did not live millions of years ago they were pre-flood not pre-historic" rofl
and how do you get them on the ark? "bring two babies" hahahah


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## NewGuy

This has got to be one of the most civil Evolution vs Creationism discussions on the internet I have ever seen. 

Ultimately I find the whole discussion fruitless in the end. As Mferko stated earlier faith is when one believes in something even in the absence of proof. Creationism is a matter of faith. Logical arguments don't work against it. True faith only gets shaken when something extraordinary happens and one has to ask oneself "WHY?" and the answer has to be "There is no cosmic justice or God". Sometimes I almost wish that I could truly believe. Then there is always that comfort factor of knowing what happens after death.


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## dZilla

YouTube - Kirk Cameron Nightmare

I don't know if this is embedding or not, but this is the banana video


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## gmachine19

dZilla said:


> People once believed that the sun revolved around the earth. The lack of evidence should not making something 'impossible.'


Evidence is one of the most important factor in order to prove a scientific. And because of sufficient evidence, people now know that its the other way around. And if I find sufficient evidence that proves evolution to be true, I will change my belief.

I'm presenting a counter argument to the OP using scientific fact and logic because we should not believe in anything without taking all things into consideration. Your statement "the lack of evidence should not make something impossible" just surprises me. I don't mean to offend you, but to me you sound like you have FAITH in the impossible...


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## Krashy_Cichlids

(Charles Darwin, Life and Letters, 1887, Vol. 2, p. 229)

Evolutionism's "Flaws" and "Holes" (http://www.creationequation.com/Printable/Print_EvolutionismsFlawsandHoles.htm) tells us:

Charles Darwin characterized his idea as a "rag of an hypothesis with as many flaws and holes as sound parts." He worried that "I&#8230;have devoted my life to a phantasy." Valid reasons exist for concern.

Top Evidences Against the Theory of Evolution: Bias Towards Evolution (Top Evidences Against the Theory of Evolution) tells us:

Darwin: "I have asked myself whether I may not have devoted my life to a fantasy." "I...am ready to cry with vexation at my blindness and presumption." ([23], p.59)

Facts and Fallacies of the Fossil Record:
Re-Evaluating the Supposed Evidences for Human Evolution (Facts and Fallacies of the Fossil Record--Lesson 2) tells us:

In the fifth place, even the father of evolution, Charles Darwin, had serious doubts about his own theory. Shortly after Darwin published his infamous book on the origin of species, he wrote in a letter to Charles Lyell: "I have asked myself whether I may not have devoted my life to a fantasy."13 In another statement in the same letter Darwin wrote: "I am the most miserable, bemuddled, stupid dog in all England, and am ready to cry with vexation at my blindness and presumption."14 If the father of evolutionary thought stated that his own theory was formulated by "blindness and presumption," how could anyone argue that he employed good scientific means in arriving at his conclusions. He did not even believe it himself!


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## big_bubba_B

well where did everything come from then ???? hard to beleave every living thing came from amino acids . so plants animals and insects came from the same pile of goop ???


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## Krashy_Cichlids

It sure is nice to know that mferko knows everything, but has no evidence to prove it. I agree with micro evolution, but what I would like to know is if birds came from lizards and such, where are all the in between species? We still have reptiles today, and we have birds but magically there are absolutely no in between species. Why is that? Mferko must know that since he knows everything else. When was the last documented case of a monkey turning into a man, I'd that is how it happens why has it magically stopped for the last 6000 years. Mferko says it only takes as little as 37 years for noticeable changes to occur. How did the solar system come about?


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## dZilla

big_bubba_B said:


> well where did everything come from then ???? hard to beleave every living thing came from amino acids . so plants animals and insects came from the same pile of goop ???


Yes. Is that crazier to believe then some mystical man that went poof and created something?
By the way who created him?


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## Krashy_Cichlids

TomC said:


> I would sure be interested to know where you got that idea.





Mferko said:


> you dont need to put faith in science, are we living in the bible belt here? the fact that you said that is infuriating tbqh
> 
> faith - belief that is not based on proof: "He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact."
> 
> we have LOTS of proof that substantiates evolution, some people are just too brainwashed to go out and find it, and when its right in front of their face ie the links i provided on the previous page, they refuse to read the FACTS because it goes against their FAITH
> 
> no, you dont need faith in science, faith is what religious people use to ignore
> science.
> 
> and btw evolution is evidence against a creator, nothing starts complex, everything comes from simple beginnings
> and even if you did believe in the silly fairy tale about adam and eve, wouldnt you need to believe in evolution to explain all the different races and creed's of people coming from those 2?


We are still all human, and no you wouldn't have to believe in evolution as the bible states that God did that for you at the Tower of Babel.


----------



## qyrus

Krashy_Cichlids said:


> It sure is nice to know that mferko knows everything, but has no evidence to prove it. I agree with micro evolution, but what I would like to know is if birds came from lizards and such, where are all the in between species? We still have reptiles today, and we have birds but magically there are absolutely no in between species. Why is that? Mferko must know that since he knows everything else. When was the last documented case of a monkey turning into a man, I'd that is how it happens why has it magically stopped for the last 6000 years. Mferko says it only takes as little as 37 years for noticeable changes to occur. How did the solar system come about?


Because the intermediate species evolved to the successive species, hence the term "intermediate". If you're looking for a link between reptiles and birds, I posted a link about feathered dinosaurs a few pages back.

There hasn't been a monkey turning into a man for two reasons, 1. 6000 years is nothing in evolutionary time. The example Mferko presented is for bacterial colony which multiplies hundreds of times faster than an advanced organism, thus generations pass by quicker. 2. Evolution does not work in the way you think it does. Man does not come from any of the current ape species, we're cousins on a different evolutionary branch. We however share a common ancestor.

I'd also like to say even if Darwin admitted he spent his life dedicated to a fallacy (which I don't believe he did), his theory of evolution still stands as the most reasonable and logical reason for the diversity of life on Earth. Him admitting it's wrong does not change anything, he is just a man who developed a brilliant theory. It's like saying Newton admitted he was wrong on the laws of physics, gravity will still be there with or without him.


----------



## Krashy_Cichlids

Ya sure, again there is no proof, and like I said before you use examples of thing that do happen and then say all of a sudden a lizard turned into a bird. Why aren't the reptiles still evolving? And I know exactly how evolution happens, natural selection only proves micro evolution and micro evolution is the only kind of evolution that can and will fiber be proven. A yellow bird over many years, through natural selection, can turn into red bird, but it is still a BIRD. I totally believe that.


----------



## silvciv888




----------



## qyrus

I don't understand how you can still deny the lack of proof when I just showed you examples of intermediate stages between a reptile and a bird. Scale down an Oviraptor and you've already got the resemblance of a modern bird (beak, feathers, on two legs). All animals on the planet currently are evolving, whenever a predator successfully catches prey or a prey successfully escapes a predator natural selection is at work dictating who or what manages to reproduce.

From what I understand, Micro and Marco evolution are just two different levels of the same process; one deals with species specific changes, the other is genus and above. A dictionary definition lists it as: "Evolutionary change below the level of the species, resulting from relatively small genetic variations. Microevolution produces new strains of microorganisms, for example, or the rise of a new subspecies. The accumulation of many microevolutionary changes results in macroevolution." This actually answers your next question, a yellow bird may turn red but that is what you are calling micro-evolution. Given tens of thousands of years who knows what may arise, evolution has no end-goal and no blueprint to follow.


----------



## Krashy_Cichlids

YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.

Hopefully the link works. Watch that and the other videos that go with it, then tell me what u think.


----------



## gklaw

silvciv888 said:


>


Very cute. A total possibility but why not a helijet  Mmmm, so what if Jesus shows up as "intermediate" winged form. What does that prove or disprove?


----------



## Krashy_Cichlids

Micro says a yellow bird turns into a red one, and macro says a reptile turns into a bird. And your examples show fossils of dinosaurs and fossils of birds, that proves that there were big reptiles and birds, we still have reptiles
And birds, just different ones.


----------



## qyrus

The yellow bird may become red, but that is only one genetic mutation. Once you include the tens of thousands of other mutations that this species of red birds may undergo through millions of years you'll most likely wind up with an animal that has almost no resemblance to the original red bird. Dinosaurs went through this same process, the examples I've shown you are snap shots of how they're evolving from scaled-animals with jaws and teeth to ones with beaks and feathers. The reptiles we see now however are not descended from dinosaurs, they share a common ancestor but are not directly related (also the reason why dinosaur/birds have legs directly under themselves while all modern reptiles have legs spread apart).

The video you linked seems to be broken, I'd love to take a look when you fix it


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## Krashy_Cichlids

The link works fine for me


----------



## gklaw

I object: "faith is what religious people use to ignore science" 

I am an engineer, love science, all the science in the SW and FW hobby and all the science and technologies to build things. I never try to define what "religious" really means, but I believe in a creator. That belief affect how I live my life in relation to the creation and other creatures.

There are countless "religious people" who are great scientists.

I enjoy reading the dialogue, let try to keep this objective and fair please .


----------



## Krashy_Cichlids

So everything we have now decended from things that magically don't appear
In the fossils? And lots of dinosaurs walked on 4 legs spread apart.


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## Krashy_Cichlids

The problem I guess is that you believe all the lies that you were taught in school. Lies that have been proven wrong.


----------



## gklaw

Krashy_Cichlids said:


> So everything we have now decended from things that magically don't appear
> In the fossils? And lots of dinosaurs walked on 4 legs spread apart.


In all fairness. It could be argued that these weak intermediate species are not numerous as they were not "fit" to survive albeit some might have made the quantum jump to complete the transformation, survived and multiplied. The fact that we have not found any fossil does not mean that they do not exist. (The same argument could be put forth for unproven Biblical detail. The fact that Biblical records appears to contradict "proven" facts does not mean that the seemingly contradicting Biblical facts are "wrong".)

Far fetched may be but still a possibility.

That still could not explain why we do not see enough of these intermediate species today. But then theories/reasons could be put forth to explain the phenomenon. Time, as suggested above might be one possible reason.


----------



## Mferko

Krashy_Cichlids said:


> The problem I guess is that you believe all the lies that you were taught in school. Lies that have been proven wrong.


lies in school? and what is their motivation or reason for lying? are you related to sarah palin by any chance?



qyrus said:


> I don't understand how you can still deny the lack of proof when I just showed you examples of intermediate stages between a reptile and a bird. Scale down an Oviraptor and you've already got the resemblance of a modern bird (beak, feathers, on two legs). All animals on the planet currently are evolving, whenever a predator successfully catches prey or a prey successfully escapes a predator natural selection is at work dictating who or what manages to reproduce.
> 
> From what I understand, Micro and Marco evolution are just two different levels of the same process; one deals with species specific changes, the other is genus and above. A dictionary definition lists it as: "Evolutionary change below the level of the species, resulting from relatively small genetic variations. Microevolution produces new strains of microorganisms, for example, or the rise of a new subspecies. The accumulation of many microevolutionary changes results in macroevolution." This actually answers your next question, a yellow bird may turn red but that is what you are calling micro-evolution. Given tens of thousands of years who knows what may arise, evolution has no end-goal and no blueprint to follow.


its quite simple, he has his faith shield up to protect him from facts,
he wont read the evidence and will continue to demonstrate his ignorance by claiming that it is lacking.

"A common claim of creationists is that evolution has never been observed.[81] Challenges to such objections often come down to debates over how evolution is defined (see above). Under the conventional biological definition of evolution, it is a simple matter to observe evolution occurring. Evolutionary processes, in the form of populations changing their genetic composition from generation to generation, have been observed in different scientific contexts, including the evolution of fruit flies, mice and bacteria in the laboratory,[82] and of tilapia in the field. Such studies on experimental evolution, particularly those using microorganisms, are now providing important insights into how evolution occurs.[82][83]

In response to such examples, creationists specify that they are objecting only to macroevolution, not microevolution:[84][85] most creationist organizations do not dispute the occurrence of short-term, relatively minor evolutionary changes, such as that observed even in dog breeding. Rather, they dispute the occurrence of major evolutionary changes over long periods of time, which by definition cannot be directly observed, only inferred from microevolutionary processes and the traces of macroevolutionary ones.

However, as biologists define macroevolution, both microevolution and macroevolution have been observed. Speciations, for example, have been directly observed many times, despite popular misconceptions to the contrary.[86] Additionally, the modern evolutionary synthesis draws no distinction between macroevolution and microevolution, considering the former to simply be the latter on a larger scale.[42][87] An example of this is ring species.

Additionally, past macroevolution can be inferred from historical traces. Transitional fossils, for example, provide plausible links between several different groups of organisms, such as Archaeopteryx linking birds and dinosaurs,[88] or the recently-discovered Tiktaalik linking fish and limbed amphibians.[89] Creationists dispute such examples, from asserting that such fossils are hoaxes or that they belong exclusively to one group or the other, to asserting that there should be far more evidence of obvious transitional species.[90] Darwin himself found the paucity of transitional species to be one of the greatest weaknesses of his theory: "Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record." Darwin appealed to the limited collections then available, the extreme lengths of time involved, and different rates of change with some living species differing very little from fossils of the Silurian period. In later editions he added "that the periods during which species have been undergoing modification, though very long as measured by years, have probably been short in comparison with the periods during which these same species remained without undergoing any change."[91] The number of clear transitional fossils has increased enormously since Darwin's day, and this problem has been largely resolved with the advent of the theory of punctuated equilibrium, which predicts a primarily stable fossil record broken up by occasional major speciations.[92]

Creationists counter that even observed speciations and transitional fossils are insufficient evidence for the vast changes summarized by such phrases as "fish to philosophers" or "particles to people".[93] As more and more compelling direct evidence for inter-species and species-to-species evolution has been gathered, creationists have redefined their understanding of what amounts to a "created kind", and have continued to insist that more dramatic demonstrations of evolution be experimentally produced.[94] One version of this objection is "Were you there?", popularized by Ken Ham. It argues that because no one except God could directly observe events in the distant past, scientific claims are just speculation or "story-telling".[95][96] DNA sequences of the genomes of organisms allow an independent test of their predicted relationships, since species which diverged more recently will be more closely related genetically than species which are more distantly related; such phylogenetic trees show a hierarchical organization within the tree of life, as predicted by common descent.[97][98]

In fields such as astrophysics or meteorology, where direct observation or laboratory experiments are difficult or impossible, the scientific method instead relies on observation and logical inference. In such fields, the test of falsifiability is satisfied when a theory is used to predict the results of new observations. When such observations contradict a theory's predictions, it may be revised or discarded if an alternative better explains the observed facts. For example, Newton's theory of gravitation was replaced by Einstein's theory of General Relativity when the latter was observed to more precisely predict the orbit of Mercury.[99]"

and

"Creationists claim that evolution relies on certain types of evidence that do not give reliable information about the past. It is argued, for example, that radiometric dating, the technique of evaluating a material's age based on the radioactive decay rates of certain isotopes, generates inconsistent, and thus unreliable, results. Radiocarbon dating, based on the Carbon 14 isotope, has been particularly criticized. It is argued that radiometric decay relies on a number of unwarranted assumptions, such as the principle of uniformitarianism, consistent decay rates, or rocks acting as closed systems. Such arguments have been dismissed by scientists on the grounds that independent methods have confirmed the reliability of radiometric dating as a whole; additionally, different radiometric dating methods and techniques have independently confirmed each other's results.[107]

Another form of this objection is that fossil evidence is not reliable. This is based on a much wider range of claims. These include that there are too many "gaps" in the fossil record,[108][109] that fossil-dating is circular (see evolution is unfalsifiable), or that certain fossils, such as polystrate fossils, are seemingly "out of place". Examination by geologists have found polystrate fossils to be consistent with in situ formation.[110] It is argued that certain features of evolution support creationism's catastrophism (cf. Great Flood), rather than evolution's gradualistic punctuated equilibrium,[111] which some assert is an "ad-hoc" theory to explain the fossil gaps"

basically just go here, scroll down and find whatever nonsensical objection you may have heard, and the scientific evidence that refutes it is right there, if you dont trust wiki you can then go lookup that evidence to confirm it (in a real book not some creationist's blog).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objections_to_evolution#Status_as_a_theory


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## Mferko

gklaw said:


> I object: "faith is what religious people use to ignore science"
> 
> I am an engineer, love science, all the science in the SW and FW hobby and all the science and technologies to build things. I never try to define what "religious" really means, but I believe in a creator. That belief affect how I live my life in relation to the creation and other creatures.
> 
> There are countless "religious people" who are great scientists.
> 
> I enjoy reading the dialogue, let try to keep this objective and fair please .


your right there are: even the guy who mapped the human genome is a christian though i dont think he is actually a creationist


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## alym

Just tuning into this discussion; in support of evolution, please look at a simple example of bacteria developing resistance to antibiotics. 

There is a lot of documented evidence showing that natural selection leads to a population of bacteria evolving to select for those individuals that resist a particular drug.

Hope this helps 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## Krashy_Cichlids

Ya but the bacteria is still a bacteria.


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## Krashy_Cichlids

And as far as you being against faith I would say it takes a lot more faith to believe that life magically appeared from a rock, than it does to believe in a higher power than yourself.


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## gklaw

Krashy_Cichlids said:


> And as far as you being against faith I would say it takes a lot more faith to believe that life magically appeared from a rock, than it does to believe in a higher power than yourself.


To some it does take more faith, to some it does not. This is a personal thing. We cannot project our personal belief into others' mind. We may never fully appreciate why they don't share our opinion.


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## silvciv888

don't forget that the various embryonic stages of many different animals (including humans) are strikingly similar. also, let's not forget vestigial structures/organs.

not to rag on creationism, but i'd like to know why there is the belief that humans and dinosaurs existed together.

i'm finding it hard to take any of the youtube creationist discussions seriously.


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## gmachine19

It's funny how some people think that the world was LITERALLY created in 6 days. To understand the passage "God created the world in 6 days," we must first understand the grammar and the style of writing of the author. 

Back in those days, the term "in my grandfather's days" was used often. Does this mean a literal single day? No. It means that the timeline of the whole single generation was being implied. So it is common to use the word "day" as a reference to a whole generation. Not a SINGLE day. 

Now in Genesis, the author used the word "day" in association with the Creator. Who knows how long a single day really is? Also note that after 6 days, man was created. It means that the Earth was prepared for man to live in. Now why would a loving Creator put men with dinos?

Another misconception about the bible also is that it CONTRADICTS science. No it does not. But thats for another topic .


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## stratos

A useful fellow to throw into your debate:

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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## qyrus

Krashy_Cichlids said:


> So everything we have now decended from things that magically don't appear
> In the fossils? And lots of dinosaurs walked on 4 legs spread apart.


YouTube - Dr. Hovind vs. Professor of Anthropology Dr. Robert Trivers 1/12

Your link kept bringing me to their mobile site, here's hopefully the same video you are trying to show. I got up to part 4 but as you'd expect I definitely did not agree with what Dr.Hovind presented. He was very clever in the way he packaged and delivered his information while sidestepping or completely ignoring Dr.Triver's arguments. Many of his points can be easily disproved though I won't do it here as it'll be quite a list  A simple Google search would dig up the relevant information if you're interested. I'll probably finish up the rest of the series later on.

Keep in mind the term "dinosaur" is actually pretty specific. If it had 4 legs spread apart it is most likely not a true dinosaur. As for fossils, it's lucky we have any at all; luckier still the ones we do have show transitional phases of ancient organisms that link to the animals we see around us.

Everything I learned at school may possibly be a lie yes, but until an even more solid and plausible idea emerges to overturn current scientific knowledge I'll stick with what I know; for me, Creationism isn't that.


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## Momobobo

gmachine19 said:


> They found water there. One basic thing needed to live. Yet no one has actually been able to find any evidence that there was life there. If in fact, evolution is true, there should be life thriving there no matter how harsh the conditions in Mars is based on our own living conditions.


The actual conditions for a planet to be habitable is actually very very strict. The number of satelites (One (ie moon)), placement relative to the sun, and many other things need to be just perfect for life to exist.

You keep argueing about "Micro Evolution" , shouldnt the existance of any evolution make it possible? you should be aware that these things are happening over Millions upon millions of years, time that compared to the time humans have existed is so insanely vast. We are only a second in the hour that life has exsisted.

And just a question to any of the religious people, were humans created at the very beggining of all life?

Human understanding of the world is very flawed, (We thought the world is flat, the discovery of quarks, etc) but I would rather much believe in a flawed system then a fantasy system.


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## kelly528

I would have to agree that everyone who thinks that after only several millenia as reasonably intelligent creatures we have solved life's great mystery is seriously kidding themselves.

Like that time when we were totally scientifically sure that the world was flat.

Oh yeah and the time that we collected bones scattered over a radius of 16 KILOMETRES, substituted a human metatersal bone to make the skeletal model complete and called it Lucy, the "missing link".

Of course most people who believe in evolution over creation presuppose that the two are mutually exclusive... which doesn't help to answer the question as to when lifeless organic compounds transformed into organisms competing for resources.

And to top it all off, I think we can all concede that you can ignorantly believe whatever your science teacher tells you just as ignorantly as you can take what your pastor tells you as the gospel.

Funny thing is, the further I go in exploring the spectacular findings in biology, biochem, neurology, psychology and every other ology, the more incredible it seems that this whole thing just happened by accident


----------



## kelly528

silvciv888 said:


> don't forget that the various embryonic stages of many different animals (including humans) are strikingly similar. also, let's not forget vestigial structures/organs.
> 
> not to rag on creationism, but i'd like to know why there is the belief that humans and dinosaurs existed together.
> 
> i'm finding it hard to take any of the youtube creationist discussions seriously.


Embyology was popular in the 70s and 80s but nowadays they are teaching it as interesting but invalid and unscientific support for evolution. Goes back to the whole causation =/= correlation fallacy.


----------



## gklaw

Momobobo said:


> The actual conditions for a planet to be habitable
> And just a question to any of the religious people, were humans created at the very beggining of all life?


I believe in creation if that make me religious Simple answer your question IMO: most likely not. I was not there to observe to be absolutely certain 

I am not aware of any religious text that suggest that.


----------



## Momobobo

kelly528 said:


> Of course most people who believe in evolution over creation presuppose that the two are mutually exclusive... which doesn't help to answer the question as to when lifeless organic compounds transformed into organisms competing for resources.


I suupose the explanation that millions of years of organic soup spontaneusly created the first prokaryotic lifeform would not be a sufficient explanation for you? 

And gklaw

Er, I do hang out with alot of Christians. Its to my understanding that Adam and Eve were the first people and were created to govern all of the other animals. They were probably created after, my mistake.


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## kelly528

Momobobo said:


> And just a question to any of the religious people, were humans created at the very beggining of all life?
> 
> Human understanding of the world is very flawed, (We thought the world is flat, the discovery of quarks, etc) but I would rather much believe in a flawed system then a fantasy system.


"Just" a question? You haven't even touched the tip of the iceberg! You forgot to ask what religion, what sect, new-earth creationists versus old-earth creationists... the list goes on and on.

We have people believing that the world is several thousand years old, or on the other hand creationists like me (old earth creationists) who believe the world is just as old as our geological records.

I like to think of the progression of time and space like dominos. God set 'em all up, from the beginning to the end of infinity. Some insane setup of dominos, bigger and more complex than everything you have ever seen on youtube. Then he flicked the first one. Some time later, planet earth is formed which leads to the condensation of hydrogen and oxygen to form water which gives us water and later the formation of organic compounds which become amine groups which become amino acids then peptides and nucleotides.... and zillions of years later the chain reaction to light stimulating your optic nerve as you read this post and the nerve impulses traveling down your arm as you type a reply 

Afterthought... for those of you that arent satisfied yet, the bible DOES mention God forming Adam out of... mud! sound like something you read in biology?


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## kelly528

And by asking when humans were created you beg the question, what _are_ humans... animals or rational beings? And when exactly did we make the jump from prehistoric primates to conscious beings? Maybe in creating Adam and Eve, God gave consciousness to **** sapiens, making them the first legitimate humans, by the philosophical and spiritual definition.


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## gklaw

May be to point out the obvious: Evolution Theory is just a "theory". It was not intended to be a law like the law of gravity. We speak as if it is proven. If it is scientifically proven, if that is possible even by millions of years of observation and records, then it will become a law.

Another interesting observation is. I've been observing and caring for my SW fish for 12 years. I am still not confident in my observations.

With respect to human consciousness, do fish have consciosness? I know mine all get different personalities even within the same species. They just may have cnsciousness different from ours that we cannot perceive.

Just a note of warning. When we approach huge topics like evolution and creation - there simply are not enough evidences or types of evidences to scientifically turn them in "facts" or "laws". We need to consider, respect and learn from each others' insights and perspectives.

Thanks you all for your insights into the topic


----------



## Mferko

Krashy_Cichlids said:


> And as far as you being against faith I would say it takes a lot more faith to believe that life magically appeared from a rock, than it does to believe in a higher power than yourself.


i find it easier to believe that life could magically spring from a rock, than an all powerful supreme being capable of communicating with 6 billion people simultaneously magically springing from a rock
everything starts simple, to postulate things start with a supreme being is retarded.

"The claim that evolution relies on faith, often based on the creationist belief that evolution has never been observed, is likewise rejected on the grounds that evolution has strong supporting evidence, and therefore does not require faith."



gklaw said:


> May be to point out the obvious: Evolution Theory is just a "theory". It was not intended to be a law like the law of gravity. We speak as if it is proven. If it is scientifically proven, if that is possible even by millions of years of observation and records, then it will become a law.
> 
> Another interesting observation is. I've been observing and caring for my SW fish for 12 years. I am still not confident in my observations.
> 
> With respect to human consciousness, do fish have consciosness? I know mine all get different personalities even within the same species. They just may have cnsciousness different from ours that we cannot perceive.
> 
> Just a note of warning. When we approach huge topics like evolution and creation - *there simply are not enough evidences or types of evidences* to scientifically turn them in "facts" or "laws". We need to consider, respect and learn from each others' insights and perspectives.
> 
> Thanks you all for your insights into the topic


Critics of evolution frequently assert that evolution is "just a theory", with the intent of emphasizing evolution's allegedly unproven nature, or of characterizing it as a matter of opinion rather than of fact or evidence. *This reflects a misunderstanding of the meaning of theory in a scientific context: whereas in colloquial speech a theory is a conjecture or guess, in science a theory is simply an explanation or model of the world that makes testable predictions*. When evolution is used to describe a theory, it refers to an explanation for the diversity of species and their ancestry. An example of evolution as theory is the modern synthesis of Darwinian natural selection and Mendelian inheritance. As with any scientific theory, the modern synthesis is constantly debated, tested, and refined by scientists. There is an overwhelming consensus in the scientific community that it remains the only robust model that accounts for the known facts concerning evolution.[36]

Critics also state that evolution is not a fact.[37] In science, a fact is a verified empirical observation; in colloquial contexts, however, a fact can simply refer to anything for which there is overwhelming evidence. For example, in common usage theories such as "the Earth revolves around the Sun" and "objects fall due to gravity" may be referred to as "facts", even though they are purely theoretical. From a scientific standpoint, therefore, evolution may be called a "fact" for the same reason that gravity can: under the scientific definition, evolution is an observable process that occurs whenever a population of organisms genetically changes over time. Under the colloquial definition, the theory of evolution can also be called a fact, referring to this theory's well-established nature. Thus, evolution is widely considered both a theory and a fact by scientists.[38][39][40]

Similar confusion is involved in objections that evolution is "unproven";[41] strict proof is possible only in formal sciences such as logic and mathematics, not natural sciences (where "validated", or "corroborated", is the proper term), so this is trivially true, and no more an indictment of evolution than calling it a "theory". The confusion arises, however, in that the colloquial meaning of proof is simply "compelling evidence", in which case scientists would indeed consider evolution "proven". The distinction is an important one in philosophy of science, as it relates to the lack of absolute certainty in all empirical claims, not just evolution.[42]


kelly528 said:


> I would have to agree that everyone who thinks that after only several millenia as reasonably intelligent creatures we have solved life's great mystery is seriously kidding themselves.
> 
> Like that time when we were totally scientifically sure that the world was flat.
> 
> Oh yeah and the time that we collected bones scattered over a radius of 16 KILOMETRES, substituted a human metatersal bone to make the skeletal model complete and called it Lucy, the "missing link".
> 
> Of course most people who believe in evolution over creation presuppose that the two are mutually exclusive... which doesn't help to answer the question as to when lifeless organic compounds transformed into organisms competing for resources.
> 
> And to top it all off, I think we can all concede that you can ignorantly believe whatever your science teacher tells you just as ignorantly as you can take what your pastor tells you as the gospel.
> 
> Funny thing is, the further I go in exploring the spectacular findings in biology, biochem, neurology, psychology and every other ology, the more incredible it seems that this whole thing just happened by accident


 it is incredible, just not as incredible as a skyman shaping us out of mud thats all, as for the flat world thing and evolution ending up the same, or not enough evidence, read below.

"Instability of evidence

A related objection is that evolution is based on unreliable evidence. This objection goes further than the less substantial "evolution isn't proven" arguments, claiming that evolution isn't even well-evidenced. Typically, this is either based on the argument that evolution's evidence is full of frauds and hoaxes, that current evidence for evolution is likely to be overturned as some past evidence has been, or that certain types of evidence are inconsistent and dubious.

Arguments against evolution's reliability are thus often based on analyzing the history of evolutionary thought or the history of science in general. Creationists point out that in the past, major scientific revolutions have overturned theories that were at the time considered near-certain. They thus claim that current evolutionary theory is likely to undergo such a revolution in the future, on the basis that it is a "theory in crisis" for one reason or another.[100]
Romanes's 1892 copy of Ernst Haeckel's embryo drawings, often attributed incorrectly to Haeckel.[101]

Critics of evolution commonly appeal to past scientific hoaxes such as the Piltdown Man forgery. It is argued that because scientists have been mistaken and deceived in the past about evidence for various aspects of evolution the current evidence for evolution is likely to also be based on fraud and error. Much of the evidence for evolution has been accused of being fraudulent at various times, including Archaeopteryx, peppered moth melanism, and Darwin's finches; these claims have been subsequently refuted.[102][103][104]

It has also been claimed that certain former pieces of evidence for evolution which are now considered out-of-date and erroneous, such as Ernst Haeckel's 19th-century comparative drawings of embryos, used to illustrate his Recapitulation theory ("Ontogeny recapitulates Phylogeny"), were not merely errors but frauds.[105] Jonathan Wells criticizes biology textbooks by alleging that they continue to reproduce such evidence after it has been debunked.[103] In response, the National Center for Science Education notes that none of the textbooks reviewed by Wells makes the claimed error, as Haeckel's drawings are shown in a historical context with discussion about why they are wrong, and the accurate modern drawings and photos used in the textbooks are misrepresented by Wells.[106]
[edit] Unreliable or inconsistent evidence

Creationists claim that evolution relies on certain types of evidence that do not give reliable information about the past. It is argued, for example, that radiometric dating, the technique of evaluating a material's age based on the radioactive decay rates of certain isotopes, generates inconsistent, and thus unreliable, results. Radiocarbon dating, based on the Carbon 14 isotope, has been particularly criticized. It is argued that radiometric decay relies on a number of unwarranted assumptions, such as the principle of uniformitarianism, consistent decay rates, or rocks acting as closed systems. Such arguments have been dismissed by scientists on the grounds that independent methods have confirmed the reliability of radiometric dating as a whole; additionally, different radiometric dating methods and techniques have independently confirmed each other's results.[107]

Another form of this objection is that fossil evidence is not reliable. This is based on a much wider range of claims. These include that there are too many "gaps" in the fossil record,[108][109] that fossil-dating is circular (see evolution is unfalsifiable), or that certain fossils, such as polystrate fossils, are seemingly "out of place". Examination by geologists have found polystrate fossils to be consistent with in situ formation.[110] It is argued that certain features of evolution support creationism's catastrophism (cf. Great Flood), rather than evolution's gradualistic punctuated equilibrium,[111] which some assert is an "ad-hoc" theory to explain the fossil gaps.[112]"

here is another large dose of evidence, if you dont believe what it says look it up 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_common_descent

honestly guys the same arguments are coming up over and over and over, they have already been refuted.

i dont think anyone here will argue that they are smarter than stephen hawking, here is what he has to say on the subject:

"God did not create the universe, and the "Big Bang" was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking argues in a new book.

In a book entitled The Grand Design, Hawking and co-author Leonard Mlodinow suggest that new theories make the concept of a creator redundant, according to an article last week in the Times (UK).

An excerpt:

Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.

In other words: the Big Bang was hardly serendipitous, or one-in-a-million. It was simply inevitable."


----------



## gmachine19

Momobobo said:


> The actual conditions for a planet to be habitable is actually very very strict. The number of satelites (One (ie moon)), placement relative to the sun, and many other things need to be just perfect for life to exist.
> 
> You keep argueing about "Micro Evolution" , shouldnt the existance of any evolution make it possible? you should be aware that these things are happening over Millions upon millions of years, time that compared to the time humans have existed is so insanely vast. We are only a second in the hour that life has exsisted.
> 
> And just a question to any of the religious people, were humans created at the very beggining of all life?
> 
> Human understanding of the world is very flawed, (We thought the world is flat, the discovery of quarks, etc) but I would rather much believe in a flawed system then a fantasy system.


Just as you said, human understanding of the world is very flawed. To us humans, to our knowledge, we think that the actual conditions for life is very strict. But if evolution does exist, there should be life there. Just check out the fish or other life forms that live very deep in our ocean. The sheer pressure alone would crush submarines and yet they thrive there.

And no, I don't argue for "micro evolution." I'm creation all the way .


----------



## Mferko

gmachine19 said:


> Just as you said, human understanding of the world is very flawed. To us humans, to our knowledge, we think that the actual conditions for life is very strict. But if evolution does exist, there should be life there. Just check out the fish or other life forms that live very deep in our ocean. The sheer pressure alone would crush submarines and yet they thrive there.
> 
> And no, I don't argue for "micro evolution." I'm creation all the way .


momobobo is 100% correct, the problem lies in your lack of understanding of evolution, just because things change over time doesnt mean life will spring into existence everywhere, why would it?
btw the pressure under the oceans crushes submarines because inside them the air is still at atmospheric pressure, if they were filled with water at the same pressure as the surroundings it would not happen, surprisingly enough fish are not full of air.

thats the TDU^2


----------



## gmachine19

And why would it not? If it happened here on earth, why not other planets?

On the side note: I bet this thread would go on forever. Why did you have to open it up ? Oh well, its a pretty nice way to get my post count up again...


----------



## gklaw

Thanks Mferko.

I will not argue against Bing Bang, neither do any religious text. Some may argue that Biblical account support Big Bang - I personally found that irrelevant in the overall scheme.

So ultimately something come out of "nothing." I thinks that is the crux of the matter and one must personally assess where one chooses to put one's faith.

Faith option 1: There is an "immovable mover" who effected "natural laws," designed and caused/allowed the Big Bangor to happen. This immovable mover created and guided how creatures evolved according to their kinds.

Faith option 2: This impersonal (or personal) "nothingness" existed as is where is by and of itself without explanation, natural laws are just the way they are "natural". Everything happens naturally and spontaneously following some mysterious natural laws combined with chance and propabilities, since the beginning of time and to the end of time.

Another interesting topic may be: What is "Time". But then I am running out of it and must take some of it our of by bottle and use it to care for my fish in case by chance they evolve into something that like to stay (float) near the water surface


----------



## Mferko

tbh i dont even have a problem with either of those options aside from the guiding of evolution, we dont know how the big bang started and i suppose it is possible that someone or something started it. i like that neither say evolution is not a fact, that is where my problem lies, nobody is entitled to their own facts. you can believe whatever you want and be wrong about it, but nobody gets their own facts.


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## gklaw

I can only speak for myself. Again, I am an engineering in construction management. I guide architects and design engineers and deal with claims on the millions. I juggle facts every day at work  - construction could be such a cut and dry impersonal business.

Not once I would dispute the facts of fossils, history, nor the not so factual philosopy, sociology, pschology, etc. I hope these studies make us wiser and more objective individually and as a human race.

Having said that, even history and daily news are biased by histories and reports who "select" and "present" the facts. Lawyers are experts at that - I've been there and practicing that almost daily, of course to much limited extent.

The matter boils down to how we choose to interpret these facts by filling the gaps in between. Fossils records and evolution theory have its holes but it does not deny the validity of using it as a tool to interpret and understand our ancestry and the history of our creation, a religiously loaded term, or may I use a more neutral term, our universe.

My point being, ultimately, even if we can prove that the first human being evolve out of the primeval amino acid or whatever that may be. The theory or fact are not valid argument against the possibility of a creator albeit we have to do a lot of reinterpretation / re-understanding of the Biblical account. Neither does my argument here imply that the Biblical God is that "unmovable mover." To come to that faith requires much more interpretation of data and filling in between the gaps.

Mferko: 

Your knowledge is impressive - I won't even attempt to pretend I understand them all. Thanks for your input and great insights.


----------



## kelly528

> honestly guys the same arguments are coming up over and over and over, they have already been refuted.
> 
> i dont think anyone here will argue that they are smarter than stephen hawking, here is what he has to say on the subject:
> 
> "God did not create the universe, and the "Big Bang" was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking argues in a new book.
> 
> In a book entitled The Grand Design, Hawking and co-author Leonard Mlodinow suggest that new theories make the concept of a creator redundant, according to an article last week in the Times (UK).
> 
> An excerpt:
> 
> Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.
> 
> In other words: the Big Bang was hardly serendipitous, or one-in-a-million. It was simply inevitable."


With all due respect,

To point out the obvious what you are making is a textbook straw-man argument. Neither me nor any creationists that I know believe that:



> all powerful supreme being capable of communicating with 6 billion people simultaneously magically springing from a rock


or


> evolution has never been observed


or


> This objection goes further than the less substantial "evolution isn't proven"


or


> scientists have been mistaken and deceived in the past about evidence for various aspects of evolution the current evidence for evolution is likely to also be based on fraud and error.


or


> evolution relies on certain types of evidence that do not give reliable information about the past.


or


> fossil evidence is not reliable.


As for your point about Stephen Hawking, it doesn't make logical sense to postulate that one must be smarter than Stephen Hawking in order to refute something he says. Thats just critical thinking 101.

Maybe the 'same argument keeps coming up over and over again' because you are quoting the same exemplary unsound creationist arguments over and over again.

I'd be interested to see you refute an actual post that someone here has made in favor of creationism rather than picking the most easily refuted arguments off Wikipedia and trouncing on them over and over again to prove your point.


----------



## Krashy_Cichlids

If the big bang occured why is it that not all the planets and such spin in the same direction?


----------



## Momobobo

I do not understand why all the planets would need to spin the same direction just because of the Big Bang. Isn't the spin of planets dictated by the gravitational pull of the star they spin around?Hell, even toilet water on planet earth doesn't spin the same direction.


----------



## Krashy_Cichlids

Momobobo said:


> I do not understand why all the planets would need to spin the same direction just because of the Big Bang. Isn't the spin of planets dictated by the gravitational pull of the star they spin around?Hell, even toilet water on planet earth doesn't spin the same direction.


Simple physics states that if a single spinning object breaks apart all the pieces have to spin in the same direction.


----------



## Momobobo

Er...
" Big Bang model, the universe, originally in an extremely hot and dense state that expanded rapidly, has since cooled by expanding to the present diluted state, and continues to expand today"

I was never aware that the Big Bang involved spinning. Am I under enlightened?


----------



## gklaw

I hope we all understand Big Bang is just a scientific hypothesis to try to explain what we observe to be happening to universe. I don't think any scientist will call this a "fact" - I could be wrong.

As we learn more, we may become more confident in the hypothesis or we may not.


----------



## Krashy_Cichlids

As for Mferko saying that evolution is fact, that is true for micro evolution, the rest is a theory based on natural selection. And the whoever was wondering about dinosaurs and people living at the same time, well dinosaurs track have been found with human tracks inside of them. Look that up. And also lookup the petrified trees that have been found that are standing straight up through many of the geological layers, that supposedly represent millions of years. Some of them are even standing upside down. Explain that! Oh wait the flood already does. As well as clam shell fossils that are found at the top of mountains. These shells are also in the closed position which means that they were alive at the time, as clams open when they die.


----------



## curtisonrad19

I know i am getting in on this late... But I am also unsure, to a point...
I would like to have faith, just for something to rely on  
For example: Who wants to admit a loved one is just rotting in the ground? It is easier just to say they are watching out for me...

But realistically, i would believe the evidence laid out infront of me before the little man in the sky. 
And forgive me if this has been finished being debated ( i skipped a couple pages cause most of these have the same arguements),
But about the who mutation vs evolution thing, 
Mutation leads to evolution.
mutation can benifit the animal (and if so the animal lives on, and passes the genes) or can be damaging ( animal dies, and doesnt pass genes on). 

Also, during class last year, we were showed studies of people "creating" life from inorganic material with electricity. This alone should disprove spontanous generation.

And as a side note, more of a personal reason i do not side with the church is because of its long history of corruption. Corruption to the extreme basically. 

And a qoute that got me thinking was "did god create man, or did man create god?" which when thought about, it is possible that man just got creative one day  


Thought i would share my two cents!


----------



## Momobobo

Krashy_Cichlids said:


> And the whoever was wondering about dinosaurs and people living at the same time, well dinosaurs track have been found with human tracks inside of them. Look that up.
> 
> 
> 
> Supposed human footprints alongside dinosaur footprints in the Paluxy River, Texas (USA)I am VERY skeptical of that. If Dinosaurs and Humans once coexsisted, why is it that there are absolutly no fossil evidence of humans dating back that far? Why is it that there were no mammels (of a decent size) at ALL in the era of dinosaurs? It's like saying there were dinosaurs in the days of Primordial soup!
> 
> And I do believe that man is the creator of the modern day god, not the other way around. Don't mean to offend anybody.
Click to expand...


----------



## Krashy_Cichlids

Momobobo said:


> Krashy_Cichlids said:
> 
> 
> 
> And the whoever was wondering about dinosaurs and people living at the same time, well dinosaurs track have been found with human tracks inside of them. Look that up.
> 
> 
> 
> Supposed human footprints alongside dinosaur footprints in the Paluxy River, Texas (USA)I am VERY skeptical of that. If Dinosaurs and Humans once coexsisted, why is it that there are absolutly no fossil evidence of humans dating back that far? Why is it that there were no mammels (of a decent size) at ALL in the era of dinosaurs? It's like saying there were dinosaurs in the days of Primordial soup!
> 
> And I do believe that man is the creator of the modern day god, not the other way around. Don't mean to offend anybody.
> 
> 
> 
> If you are using geological layers for dating, then sure they seem to be millions of years apart. But look up the petrified trees I talked about and they totally disprove the geological time. So if you consider a flood then the layers would be based on majorilly on density. So organisms of similar density and ability to move to higher ground during a flood would be found in respective layers. So the fact that humans and reptiles would have a different density would put them in different layers.
> 
> Click to expand...
Click to expand...


----------



## Krashy_Cichlids

curtisonrad19 said:


> I know i am getting in on this late... But I am also unsure, to a point...
> I would like to have faith, just for something to rely on
> For example: Who wants to admit a loved one is just rotting in the ground? It is easier just to say they are watching out for me...
> 
> But realistically, i would believe the evidence laid out infront of me before the little man in the sky.
> And forgive me if this has been finished being debated ( i skipped a couple pages cause most of these have the same arguements),
> But about the who mutation vs evolution thing,
> Mutation leads to evolution.
> mutation can benifit the animal (and if so the animal lives on, and passes the genes) or can be damaging ( animal dies, and doesnt pass genes on).
> 
> Also, during class last year, we were showed studies of people "creating" life from inorganic material with electricity. This alone should disprove spontanous generation.
> 
> And as a side note, more of a personal reason i do not side with the church is because of its long history of corruption. Corruption to the extreme basically.
> 
> And a qoute that got me thinking was "did god create man, or did man create god?" which when thought about, it is possible that man just got creative one day
> 
> Thought i would share my two cents!


A mutation is when an error occurs in the DNA sequence, and there has never been a genetic mutation that has been found to be benificial. Natural selection does not act on mutations as much as it does on variations.


----------



## Krashy_Cichlids

I would also love to see one of these studies where man created life from inorganic materials. That is the biggest lie I have ever heard.


----------



## curtisonrad19

Science Literature - Primordial soup is "well past its sell-by date"
Is a paper about the theory behind the inorganic to organic studies, i have been looking but was unable to find the same study that was shown during class. 
Although to flat out call it a lie is a bit much, although you may not believe in it, does not mean it is wrong.

Also, I am aware what mutation is within a DNA sequence, and once again to say there no benifit, is quite... misleading?
Although rare, mutation can be benifital to a species, 
As this scientific paper says "	In previous work (Betancourt, Genetics 181:1535, 2009), I propagated three large laboratory populations of an RNA phage (MS2) as they adapted to a controlled laboratory environment. These populations were large enough so that evolution might be expected to be mostly repeatable, but they nevertheless fixed different suites of mutations over the course of the experiment. Here, I investigate one possible explanation for these results: epistasis, in which the effect of a mutation depends on its genetic background, may have prevented populations with different initial substitutions from fixing the same set of subsequent mutations. I show that two mutations that previously occurred in different genetic backgrounds are beneficial on either background. This result suggests that sign epistasis-in which a mutation is beneficial on one background, but deleterious on another-is not the cause of different evolutionary trajectories observed in the Betancourt (2009) experiment. However, they can be explained by either magnitude epistasis-in which mutations have stronger or weaker beneficial effects depending on the background-or by the simultaneous fixation of multiple beneficial mutations. Surprisingly, the large populations of the previous experiment showed less parallel evolution than the small populations of this experiment, which lends support to the fixation of multiple beneficial mutations contributing to the patterns seen in both experiments." 
I included the whole abstract =]

Also i find this topic very interesting, I doubt to see a clear answer during my life time. Though id put my money on alien lifeforms way before the little man in the sky


----------



## gmachine19

Natural selection - If it's true that the "fittest" should survive, why are there still monkeys to this day? Shouldn't they be wiped off by now if we evolved from them? Also, Natural selection does not explain how a species came to be that species.

I also agree that there hasn't been a case of beneficial mutation that has been recorded that the animal passed to another generation.


----------



## Mferko

Krashy_Cichlids said:


> As for Mferko saying that evolution is fact, that is true for micro evolution, the rest is a theory based on natural selection. And the whoever was wondering about dinosaurs and people living at the same time, well dinosaurs track have been found with human tracks inside of them. Look that up. And also lookup the petrified trees that have been found that are standing straight up through many of the geological layers, that supposedly represent millions of years. Some of them are even standing upside down. Explain that! Oh wait the flood already does. As well as clam shell fossils that are found at the top of mountains. These shells are also in the closed position which means that they were alive at the time, as clams open when they die.





Krashy_Cichlids said:


> I would also love to see one of these studies where man created life from inorganic materials. That is the biggest lie I have ever heard.


no you wouldnt, you dont want to see anything that proves your wrong, you have already demonstrated that, your still clinging to the microevolution bullpoo despite the fact it has been refuted, and now your calling us liars while telling us adam and eve rode on dinosaurs, im sorry, your wrong, and even if you dont intend to be lying, your spreading lies none the less.

prove me wrong and read this:
"In response to such examples, creationists specify that they are objecting only to macroevolution, not microevolution:[84][85] most creationist organizations do not dispute the occurrence of short-term, relatively minor evolutionary changes, such as that observed even in dog breeding. Rather, they dispute the occurrence of major evolutionary changes over long periods of time, which by definition cannot be directly observed, only inferred from microevolutionary processes and the traces of macroevolutionary ones.

However, as biologists define macroevolution, both microevolution and macroevolution have been observed. Speciations, for example, have been directly observed many times, despite popular misconceptions to the contrary.[86] Additionally, the modern evolutionary synthesis draws no distinction between macroevolution and microevolution, considering the former to simply be the latter on a larger scale.[42][87] An example of this is ring species."

im not even going to bother countering your human and dinosaur tracks together, most people over the age of 10 are smart enough to realize thats total bollocks.


----------



## Mferko

gmachine19 said:


> Natural selection - If it's true that the "fittest" should survive, why are there still monkeys to this day? Shouldn't they be wiped off by now if we evolved from them? Also, Natural selection does not explain how a species came to be that species.
> 
> I also agree that there hasn't been a case of beneficial mutation that has been recorded that the animal passed to another generation.


this too we have gone over, we did not evolve from them, we share a common ancestor. its like a tree starting with the trunk at the bottom and then constantly branching off, were not talking about transformers here.


----------



## Mferko

curtisonrad19 said:


> Science Literature - Primordial soup is "well past its sell-by date"
> Is a paper about the theory behind the inorganic to organic studies, i have been looking but was unable to find the same study that was shown during class.
> Although to flat out call it a lie is a bit much, although you may not believe in it, does not mean it is wrong.
> 
> Also, I am aware what mutation is within a DNA sequence, and once again to say there no benifit, is quite... misleading?
> Although rare, mutation can be benifital to a species,
> As this scientific paper says "	In previous work (Betancourt, Genetics 181:1535, 2009), I propagated three large laboratory populations of an RNA phage (MS2) as they adapted to a controlled laboratory environment. These populations were large enough so that evolution might be expected to be mostly repeatable, but they nevertheless fixed different suites of mutations over the course of the experiment. Here, I investigate one possible explanation for these results: epistasis, in which the effect of a mutation depends on its genetic background, may have prevented populations with different initial substitutions from fixing the same set of subsequent mutations. I show that two mutations that previously occurred in different genetic backgrounds are beneficial on either background. This result suggests that sign epistasis-in which a mutation is beneficial on one background, but deleterious on another-is not the cause of different evolutionary trajectories observed in the Betancourt (2009) experiment. However, they can be explained by either magnitude epistasis-in which mutations have stronger or weaker beneficial effects depending on the background-or by the simultaneous fixation of multiple beneficial mutations. Surprisingly, the large populations of the previous experiment showed less parallel evolution than the small populations of this experiment, which lends support to the fixation of multiple beneficial mutations contributing to the patterns seen in both experiments."
> I included the whole abstract =]
> 
> Also i find this topic very interesting, I doubt to see a clear answer during my life time. Though id put my money on alien lifeforms way before the little man in the sky


exactly, the mutation that allowed Lenski's e coli to utilize citrate and not just glucose is another example of a beneficial mutation.


----------



## Mferko

kelly528 said:


> With all due respect,
> 
> To point out the obvious what you are making is a textbook straw-man argument. Neither me nor any creationists that I know believe that:
> 
> or
> 
> or
> 
> or
> 
> or
> 
> or
> 
> As for your point about Stephen Hawking, it doesn't make logical sense to postulate that one must be smarter than Stephen Hawking in order to refute something he says. Thats just critical thinking 101.
> 
> Maybe the 'same argument keeps coming up over and over again' because you are quoting the same exemplary unsound creationist arguments over and over again.
> 
> I'd be interested to see you refute an actual post that someone here has made in favor of creationism rather than picking the most easily refuted arguments off Wikipedia and trouncing on them over and over again to prove your point.


if your not refuting evolution i dont feel the need. im spending my time on the people with flawed arguments against evolution, i could care less if you still want to believe in a higher power be it a supernatural deity or aliens turning our planet into the equivalent of a large ant farm, as long as you arent ignoring the facts


----------



## Mferko

kelly528 said:


> And by asking when humans were created you beg the question, what _are_ humans... animals or rational beings? And when exactly did we make the jump from prehistoric primates to conscious beings? Maybe in creating Adam and Eve, God gave consciousness to **** sapiens, making them the first legitimate humans, by the philosophical and spiritual definition.


we arent the only ones with consciousness and we arent even the only ones with theory of mind, we did not make a "jump" from anything either, everything happens gradually over time, a monkey didnt just have a human baby. 
thats why pointing out holes in the fossil record such as lucy doesnt matter, we are lucky we even have the fossil record but evolution can be proven without it, fossils are just a snapshot in time its not to say that once there was a monkey then it gave birth to a lucy which gave birth to a human, no, it happened gradually over millions of years.
even the pope concedes that the adam and eve story is not to be taken literally so maybe not including it in your arguments would be wise.


----------



## Mferko

this should help to illustrate the branching effect, notice that no line is just straight with several species along its length transforming, they branch off of one another.


----------



## curtisonrad19

> no you wouldnt, you dont want to see anything that proves your wrong...


I tend to agree.

Another qoute if i may! 
"if you could reason wth religious people there would be no religious people"- house.


----------



## Mferko

to inject some comedy back in to the thread, one of my all time fav comedians
George Carlin


----------



## gmachine19

And where is that common ancestor that you speak off? Where's the record/evidence?


----------



## kelly528

Mferko said:


> if your not refuting evolution i dont feel the need. im spending my time on the people with flawed arguments against evolution, i could care less if you still want to believe in a higher power be it a supernatural deity or aliens turning our planet into the equivalent of a large ant farm, as long as you arent ignoring the facts


Well the title of the thread _was_ 'Evolution or Creation'. But if you intended it to be only about evolution, I guess we're both on the same page then. Glad I didn't spend as much time as some people typing out posts.


----------



## kelly528

gmachine19 said:


> And where is that common ancestor that you speak off? Where's the record/evidence?


Here.


----------



## Mferko

kelly528 said:


> Well the title of the thread _was_ 'Evolution or Creation'. But if you intended it to be only about evolution, I guess we're both on the same page then. Glad I didn't spend as much time as some people typing out posts.


the original title was evolution or religion and since i didnt want to offend people i changed religion to creation, i guess i should go change it to evolution is a fact.
i didnt create this thread it got broken off of a different one by a mod when we got off topic posting quotes in a thread about stupid people feeding coyotes

Evolution is a fact. Beyond reasonable doubt, beyond serious doubt, beyond sane, informed, intelligent doubt, beyond doubt evolution is a fact.
-Richard Dawkins


----------



## Mferko

check it out i can find funny cartoons too


----------



## Momobobo

Krashy_Cichlids said:


> A mutation is when an error occurs in the DNA sequence, and there has never been a genetic mutation that has been found to be benificial. Natural selection does not act on mutations as much as it does on variations.


...art thou serious?

Taken straight from my 1st year Biology Cambell textbook

""many loci at once are almost certain to be harmful. *However*, when such mutations leave genes intanct, their effects on organisms may be neutral. In rare cases, chromosomal rearrangements may even be *benificial*."

All the creationists are spouting, wheres your evidence, wheres your proof? Well wheres yours? I thought it was common sense we (all modern apes) evolved from a single ancestor.

And no, just because humans exist doesn't not mean monkeys should not. Just because the great white shark exists does it mean that Mako Sharks shouldn't? The reason there is diversity is species RADIATE to fill in different niches, not compete for the same.


----------



## Mferko

Krashy_Cichlids said:


> As for Mferko saying that evolution is fact, that is true for micro evolution, the rest is a theory based on natural selection. And the whoever was wondering about dinosaurs and people living at the same time, well dinosaurs track have been found with human tracks inside of them. Look that up. And also lookup the petrified trees that have been found that are standing straight up through many of the geological layers, that supposedly represent millions of years. Some of them are even standing upside down. Explain that! Oh wait the flood already does. As well as clam shell fossils that are found at the top of mountains. These shells are also in the closed position which means that they were alive at the time, as clams open when they die.


lol the flood already does? ive heard creationists spout on about how they think the complex things are at the top and the simple things are at the bottom because the complex things survived longer in "the flood", but dont you think the fish and other marine creatures found below the mammals are a bit better adapted at surviving floods than air breathing mammals?

that argument is just plain stupid. sorry to put it so bluntly.

and do you realize that there was a sea separating east and west north america during the time of the dinosaurs? thats why there are things such as the megalodon shark found on mountains in montana
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalodon

and just when you thought a petrified tree could throw a wrench in the facts, i introduce to you: dendrochronology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendrochronology


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## Momobobo

Krashy_Cichlids said:


> And also lookup the petrified trees that have been found that are standing straight up through many of the geological layers, that supposedly represent millions of years. Some of them are even standing upside down. Explain that! Oh wait the flood already does. As well as clam shell fossils that are found at the top of mountains. These shells are also in the closed position which means that they were alive at the time, as clams open when they die.


Trees do live for a really long time you realize. Basically as long as they have leaves that can take in sunlight, sufficient soil and nutrients, and water they can live for an infinite amount of time. And small floods do happen, which bring in silt and such to fossilize trees. Or are you going to call every single flood and mudslide in south america the "great flood"?

The clams could be explained by the formation of mountains. When two plates collide to form a mountain the sea beds would be raised to form the mountain.


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## Mferko

Momobobo said:


> Trees do live for a really long time you realize. Basically as long as they have leaves that can take in sunlight, sufficient soil and nutrients, and water they can live for an infinite amount of time. And small floods do happen, which bring in silt and such to fossilize trees. Or are you going to call every single flood and mudslide in south america the "great flood"?
> 
> The clams could be explained by the formation of mountains. When two plates collide to form a mountain the sea beds would be raised to form the mountain.


exactly, they live a hell of a long time, if youve seen the planet earth series, there are pine trees alive here in north america nearly 5000 years old, thats older than the pyramids in egypt.

Bristlecone pine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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## rescuepenguin

As an argument this question is un winable. As a debate, it will never end. I can't count the number of hours I have lost to people insisting that they practice the ONLY correct religion. My only reply to them is that a being as almighty and all knowing as God could not possibly so narrow minded as to select only one religion as correct. The more I learn about other religions (I was raised Christian, but do not practice it) the more I see that they all teach the same basic message. Another interesting thing, that I often observe is that they offer different perspectives on day to day life. I personally believe in evolution. Changes in species need to occur to survive in their ever changing environment. We see software change and evolve from one version to the next. I find this makes an excellent metaphor for evolution in life. If we were created, or our genetic structure was modified, there must still be changes to us over time to cope with our ever changing world. I do not believe that we are humans ver. 1.0. Often I find that a person's refusal to believe in evolution is actually their fear of offending the almighty creator.

I prefer to be open minded about things, If I end up before God on judgement day, I will know the creationists were right. If I end up a superhuman slave to a group of aliens whether they are the super intellgient reptiles or the greys, I'll know that our genes were monkeyed with. Until then I am keeping an open mind about everything. We may or may not have the answer at some point. 

In the mean time, I try to be the best person I can, enjoy learning about other cultures and religions, and treat everybody with the dignity and respect they deserve.

Steve


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## bonsai dave

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c]YouTube - George Carlin - Saving the Planet


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## Mferko

rescuepenguin said:


> As an argument this question is un winable. As a debate, it will never end. I can't count the number of hours I have lost to people insisting that they practice the ONLY correct religion. My only reply to them is that a being as almighty and all knowing as God could not possibly so narrow minded as to select only one religion as correct. The more I learn about other religions (I was raised Christian, but do not practice it) the more I see that they all teach the same basic message. Another interesting thing, that I often observe is that they offer different perspectives on day to day life. I personally believe in evolution. Changes in species need to occur to survive in their ever changing environment. We see software change and evolve from one version to the next. I find this makes an excellent metaphor for evolution in life. If we were created, or our genetic structure was modified, there must still be changes to us over time to cope with our ever changing world. I do not believe that we are humans ver. 1.0. Often I find that a person's refusal to believe in evolution is actually their fear of offending the almighty creator.
> 
> I prefer to be open minded about things, If I end up before God on judgement day, I will know the creationists were right. If I end up a superhuman slave to a group of aliens whether they are the super intellgient reptiles or the greys, I'll know that our genes were monkeyed with. Until then I am keeping an open mind about everything. We may or may not have the answer at some point.
> 
> In the mean time, I try to be the best person I can, enjoy learning about other cultures and religions, and treat everybody with the dignity and respect they deserve.
> 
> Steve


a great post

from the reading i have done i believe that religion was needed to help govern people in larger groups, when your in a small group of kin your not likely to steal from your cousins, your going to get caught and it doesnt benefit the group. when we started living in larger groups rules are needed and religion and politics went hand-in-hand back then. 
it also doesnt hurt that people police themselves to a certain extent through fear of hellfire or some other superstition

there is an interesting although somewhat dry book on the subject called the evolution of god by Robert Wright

The Evolution of God - by Robert Wright

tbh i used to be somewhat anti-religious but after reading this book i have respect for where it got us, i think it was a necessary step towards civilization, and it made me realize that religion has been evolving alongside science ever since the first shaman started selling access to the supernatural


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## Mferko

Discus Dave said:


> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c]YouTube - George Carlin - Saving the Planet


lol yep, the planet is fine, the people are ****ed
life will go on with or without us 

i like this one too


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## bonsai dave

Got to love George. To bad he is not longer here to make sence of crap in the world.


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## Mferko

i'll drink to that


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## rescuepenguin

It is the study of Islam, and the Kalsa movement that really opened my eyes. I do from time to time ask one of my Muslim friends for an Islamic perspective on an issue. I have been to a Mosque for Friday prayers, but have not made it to a Sikh temple yet. The learning never stops and I love it.

Steve


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## Momobobo

^ Saw that one awhile ago, it's a riot xD (The stuff video)


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## Mferko

i agree with neven that the original title was fine, this thread started in another as a discussion and should remain that way
it has been changed back

it was implied by someone that people who believe in evolution arent smart which i found somewhat offensive since it is a fact and i thought was both common sense and required learning in school. so i decided show the evidence for it. from my experience talking to people about evolution usually the problem is they dont understand it or are defining it incorrectly, not that they are against it, so i wanted to bring fourth some of the evidence.

i believe there is room in this world for science AND religion, they have been evolving together for ages, since it was determined the whether wasnt controlled by the supernatural (more likely even before that).
and for the record im fully aware the scientific method had not even been conceived of yet, im using the word in the more broad sense of the persuit of truth


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## neven

no matter how tame you try to keep a discussion of this sort, someone will be offended. that is why i kept out of both threads for the most part. i got my own beliefs and they are my own. People are always quick to call someone else stupid or wrong because they will always think their core beliefs are in the right. On thing the net is great for is finding what you want to find from people with some sort of credentials, ie ensuring you are "right"

In order to keep these discussions tame, people must overlook the arguements that do get personal or go overboard. Once your piece is said theres no point saying it over and over again because it just becomes like any other red zone topic, a simple yelling match


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## Mferko

tbh im pretty impressed with how civil this normally taboo subject is being discussed among this community, kudos to the membership and moderators here
i think evolutionary biology is one of the most interesting and beautiful subjects even though it is commonly misunderstood... and i think lots of fish and shrimp breeders use evolutionary theory whether or not they know it, its actually what brought me back into the hobby after keeping fish as a kid in my parents house and stopping when i moved out
another subject im extremely interested in atm is biomimicry, anyone with an interest in biology or engineering would find it fascinating im sure
check out these talks if your interested in either:


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## cpool

Mferko said:


> it was implied by someone that people who believe in evolution arent smart which i found somewhat offensive since it is a fact and i thought was both common sense and required learning in school. so i decided show the evidence for it. from my experience talking to people about evolution usually the problem is they dont understand it or are defining it incorrectly, not that they are against it, so i wanted to bring fourth some of the evidence.


Interesting comment! I seem to remember someone who will remain nameless (Ok, it was you Mferko) first saying that anyone who doesn't believe in Evolution is "Spectacularly Ignorant."


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## Mferko

i made it very clear that it was a quotation not written by myself, where as you were saying that educated people that believe in one of the tenets of biology are not smart.


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## summit

Mferko said:


> basically, if the slightest bit of foresight benefited our ancestors, that trait was positively selected for, and over the millions upon millions of years of evolution it is refined and improved upon
> the uniqueness of humans vid above also shows how chimps demonstrate theory of mind, which even us humans dont develop until about age four or five
> 
> in the same way that a single photoreceptor evolved into the eyeball Evolution of the eye - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
> we can actually see all of these different stages in mollusks alone
> Encyclopedia - Britannica Online Encyclopedia
> 
> everything comes from simple beginnings
> 
> check this out too, one of the best documented examples of evolution is in whales
> YouTube - Whale Evolution 1of5


So are you questioning that humans benefitted from foresight? or stating it to be true that humans did in fact benefit from foresight? No more youtube videos, or wiki copy paste posts, I would appreciate it in your own words, it took me the weekend to catch up on all this homework your giving me  Bottom line for me is that we did benefit from foresight, and if we cannot yet point to facts as to why we developed this foresight so much more advanced than any creature on this planet, then we cannot prove evolution, as thats a big part of our evolution process IMO.

The examples your giving me do not really prove foresight IMO, you point to squirells storing nuts and crows making crude tools to get at food as foresight, they can also be argued as simply instincts of survival. Show me a squirell that is thatching its leaky roof because it thinks it might rain tommorrow and I will buy that squirells have foresight, but storing nuts can simply be built upon an instinct to store food, unless there is examples I am unaware of that they have proof these squirells are storing nuts because it knows winter is approaching? Evidence that this is not the case is simply because squirells spend ALL their time gathering and storing, not a select amount of time before winter, they are constantly preparing.

I am not really arguing creationism vs evolution, more along the lines that evolution is fact, it may be close, but in my opinion there is still room for a curveball that could make it wrong and rethink much of what we think we may know.


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## Mferko

summit said:


> So are you questioning that humans benefitted from foresight? or stating it to be true that humans did in fact benefit from foresight? No more youtube videos, or wiki copy paste posts, I would appreciate it in your own words, it took me the weekend to catch up on all this homework your giving me  Bottom line for me is that we did benefit from foresight, and if we cannot yet point to facts as to why we developed this foresight so much more advanced than any creature on this planet, then we cannot prove evolution, as thats a big part of our evolution process IMO.
> 
> The examples your giving me do not really prove foresight IMO, you point to squirells storing nuts and crows making crude tools to get at food as foresight, they can also be argued as simply instincts of survival. Show me a squirell that is thatching its leaky roof because it thinks it might rain tommorrow and I will buy that squirells have foresight, but storing nuts can simply be built upon an instinct to store food, unless there is examples I am unaware of that they have proof these squirells are storing nuts because it knows winter is approaching? Evidence that this is not the case is simply because squirells spend ALL their time gathering and storing, not a select amount of time before winter, they are constantly preparing.
> 
> I am not really arguing creationism vs evolution, more along the lines that evolution is fact, it may be close, but in my opinion there is still room for a curveball that could make it wrong and rethink much of what we think we may know.


of course we benefit from foresight, why did we develop it better? in my opinion it would be because we left our ecological niche and started covering long distances where we needed to be able to adapt to new environments, it takes too long to evolve fur, we can kill and skin an animal and wear its fur and we can teach our children to do that.

as for 'just instinct,' not in chimps they have been shown to have theory of mind, for squirrels: at this point it might be, but that happens as a result of evolution, ie squirrels that did a good job preparing for the winter lived and passed on their genes and it was positively selected for.
there are crows in japan that will drop nuts in traffic because they cannot crack them open but the cars can, then when the light is red they will swoop down, eat the nuts and as soon as the light goes green they know to get off the road.
now try to tell me thats an instinct for survival, what other animal wastes time and energy carrying food around just to drop it on the road? i know its not an example of evolution but the point is crows that are able to think like that will be positively favored by natural selection, will have a higher evolutionary 'fitness', and over time the frequency of genes in the gene pool will change, and that is the definition of evolution.

lastly, as for 'we cannot prove evolution' scientific facts dont need to be proven they need to be disproven, you need to find or create an experiment with repeatable results that disproves evolution, so far nobody else has been able to do that.


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## summit

Mferko said:


> of course we benefit from foresight, why did we develop it better? in my opinion it would be because we left our ecological niche and started covering long distances where we needed to be able to adapt to new environments, it takes too long to evolve fur, we can kill and skin an animal and wear its fur and we can teach our children to do that.
> 
> as for 'just instinct,' not in chimps they have been shown to have theory of mind, for squirrels: at this point it might be, but that happens as a result of evolution, ie squirrels that did a good job preparing for the winter lived and passed on their genes and it was positively selected for.
> there are crows in japan that will drop nuts in traffic because they cannot crack them open but the cars can, then when the light is red they will swoop down, eat the nuts and as soon as the light goes green they know to get off the road.
> now try to tell me thats an instinct for survival, what other animal wastes time and energy carrying food around just to drop it on the road? i know its not an example of evolution but the point is crows that are able to think like that will be positively favored by natural selection, will have a higher evolutionary 'fitness', and over time the frequency of genes in the gene pool will change, and that is the definition of evolution.
> 
> lastly, as for 'we cannot prove evolution' scientific facts dont need to be proven they need to be disproven, you need to find or create an experiment with repeatable results that disproves evolution, so far nobody else has been able to do that.


Eagles, ravens and sea guls off the top of my head will drop food from heights to get to their meals, otters will also use rocks to break open the food, being as food is a necessity for survival, it can be argued that its not foresight, I am not saying one way or another personally, just pointing out there is an argument there. Give me an example of them doing something that would be along the lines of foresight that does not involve items for survival, that to me is true human forsesight and is unique to us, and its amazing to me we are the only ones to develop it it evolution happened exactly the way they theorize now.

I did state earlier that I lean towards evolution, and have no doubt it exists, I just don't necessarily believe it to be 100% fact or else there would be sound evidence for why humanity has achieved the advanced state of foresight, although I do think evolution did play a big part in why we are who we are, but there is still to much unknown to say 100% we were not given some sort of head start.


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## Mferko

this is not just dropping food from heights, but carrying it to a road so that cars can run over it and crush the shell with the wheels, and unlike rocks, cars havent been around that long so i dont think you could say god programmed them to do that
for more examples of foresight in apes go back to that uniqueness of humans video that i posted

there is definitely more to learn, but i would bet everything i have that evolution will never be disproven, we will just learn about it in more detail

btw check out this video on mirror neurons, amazing stuff, i think they should do a study on other apes to see if they also have these neurons (if its not already being done)


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## Mferko

actually 2 videos on page 4 have examples, the uniqueness of humans as well as the one by susan savage about bonobos


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## Momobobo

I think I'll just drop this here...

6 Ways Crows are smarter then you think


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## kelly528

Mferko said:


> lastly, as for 'we cannot prove evolution' scientific facts dont need to be proven they need to be disproven, you need to find or create an experiment with repeatable results that disproves evolution, so far nobody else has been able to do that.


...so I can count it as a scientific fact that there is a teapot between earth and mars revolving in an elliptical orbit around the sun...?


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## Mferko

kelly528 said:


> ...so I can count it as a scientific fact that there is a teapot between earth and mars revolving in an elliptical orbit around the sun...?


since it cant be proven and there is no evidence and it wouldnt hold up to rational discussion, no, thats not a fact, that would be delusional, like believing a skyman made you from mud
your confusion seems to be with the scientific method, you should look it up. theories need to be proven, once theyre facts they need to be disproven and when that happens a new theory needs to be created that incorporates all of the evidence



Momobobo said:


> I think I'll just drop this here...
> 
> 6 Ways Crows are smarter then you think


yeah 15 pages is probably enough... for those that are still skeptical enroll yourselves in a biology course or go to the library.


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## Momobobo

kelly528 said:


> ...so I can count it as a scientific fact that there is a teapot between earth and mars revolving in an elliptical orbit around the sun...?


Form an hyphothesis, do experiments to prove or disprove your hyphothesis, and then recreate the experiment with simalar results to prove your "theory."

Find me the facts for that hyphothesis of yours and I'll believe  I never understood why theres an entire unit in 1st year Bio going through Scientific Method (which teaches basically the above) when to me it just seems like common sense.


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## kelly528

Mferko said:


> since it cant be proven and there is no evidence and it wouldnt hold up to rational discussion, no, thats not a fact, that would be delusional, like believing a skyman made you from mud
> your confusion seems to be with the scientific method, you should look it up. theories need to be proven, once theyre facts they need to be disproven and when that happens a new theory needs to be created that incorporates all of the evidence


I think the problem is that the Cosmic Teapot holds up all to well to rational discussion, in the strictest sense of rationality, for example that seen in formal logic, math and formal sciences, where the concept of 'proof' is not used as colloquially as it is in the natural sciences.


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## big_bubba_B

wow this is as boring as watcing two ants crawl across the floor. but is that forsight lol


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## Krashy_Cichlids

Momobobo said:


> Trees do live for a really long time you realize. Basically as long as they have leaves that can take in sunlight, sufficient soil and nutrients, and water they can live for an infinite amount of time. And small floods do happen, which bring in silt and such to fossilize trees. Or are you going to call every single flood and mudslide in south america the "great flood"?
> 
> The clams could be explained by the formation of mountains. When two plates collide to form a mountain the sea beds would be raised to form the mountain.


Explain the ones that are upside down, and trees won't live with dirt piled up around the trunk, or stand for millions of years. They rot.


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## Krashy_Cichlids

Mferko said:


> i agree with neven that the original title was fine, this thread started in another as a discussion and should remain that way
> it has been changed back
> 
> it was implied by someone that people who believe in evolution arent smart which i found somewhat offensive since it is a fact and i thought was both common sense and required learning in school. so i decided show the evidence for it. from my experience talking to people about evolution usually the problem is they dont understand it or are defining it incorrectly, not that they are against it, so i wanted to bring fourth some of the evidence.
> 
> i believe there is room in this world for science AND religion, they have been evolving together for ages, since it was determined the whether wasnt controlled by the supernatural (more likely even before that).
> and for the record im fully aware the scientific method had not even been conceived of yet, im using the word in the more broad sense of the persuit of truth


I haven't seen any evidence yet, fossils prove nothing except that there used to be more species of animals than there are today.


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## big_bubba_B

Well I have seen alot of documentorys about humans and how we all started and it is realy hard to beleave we all started rom apes .mostly beacasue of the deffrent races of people . that would mean we would have evolved from many deffrent races of primates, 
ost people have the same diet of meat . fish , grains and fruit . so one cannot say it was what we ate that made the color of skin they way it is , also u if u look at some species they have de-evolved . there were giant crocks , bears, sharks , tigers, even hoarses, the giant sloth was enormus compared to what it is now , even bugs were alot bigger, so how can that be called evelution , and also tell me how all dinosaurs on land and in the sea were extincet , and yet crocks ,fish , lizards , sharks, that lived then are still around . no one can prove why this has happend . why cant they tell us what ape we came from , most of there findings are all theary and not a hard line fact . darwis theary of evolution was based on an educated gues, there hasbeen lots of educated gueses and they have been proven wrong . there is to much left out info to have an awnser . also the big bang theary . saposably everything was created from a mear ball of energy . so what was around that small ball of energy . was it infanite nothing . was it a higher powe that made it explode or was it just a fluke chance . like they chalk everything up to be . LOL sorry to ramble on but there is to much B.S being spread by people with educated gueses and to many unawserd questions . sorry for spelling buti dont have spell check on my new comp yet


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## Mferko

lmao, it would seem appropriate to finnish this back where we started

There is a name to describe the disorder that a large portion of the human race suffers from who have the mindset NOT to believe in evolution and by default science; Spectacularly Ignorant Syndrome (SIS).
SIS is a state of mind that affects an extraordinary number of humans worldwide, which, in certain rare cases, CAN be treated successfully with a good dose of education and evidence.
Sadly though, history shows that the vast majority of SIS sufferers are untreatable, as they suffer from a secondary condition known as; They Don’t Understand That They Don’t Understand Syndrome (TDU/2).
Humans that suffer from both SIS and TDU/2 syndromes are a lost cause, everywhere, and are very dangerous.
Their outward symptoms normally give them up quickly though because as the evidence shows, if you have a disagreement with a sufferer of SIS + TDU/2 syndrome, you will quickly see the characteristics of vitriol, spite, intimidation, character assassination or worse still if it’s real world, be threatened with loss of liberty or life by violence at their hand, or from whatever; knife, sword, gun, bomb or thermo nuclear device happens to be on hand (one day).
SIS + TDU/2 Syndromes, as well as; greed, jealousy, envy, racism, bigotry and Napoleon complex syndromes (& others), are just two more of the many conditions that mother nature has encoded into our DNA to ensure that the recipe for conflict and self destruction of the human race is in no way lacking in rich ingredients. Mother Nature? May the force be with you.


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## summit

Mferko said:


> this is not just dropping food from heights, but carrying it to a road so that cars can run over it and crush the shell with the wheels, and unlike rocks, cars havent been around that long so i dont think you could say god programmed them to do that
> for more examples of foresight in apes go back to that uniqueness of humans video that i posted
> 
> there is definitely more to learn, but i would bet everything i have that evolution will never be disproven, we will just learn about it in more detail
> 
> btw check out this video on mirror neurons, amazing stuff, i think they should do a study on other apes to see if they also have these neurons (if its not already being done)
> 
> YouTube - VS Ramachandran: The neurons that shaped civilization


Animals will do the least amount of work necessary to get their food source, this is a survival instict to expell the least amount of energy to get food, sounds very similar to what these crows are doing does it not? Again it comes down to survival, I do not dispute that a crow can learn to get their food from different sources if its easier, they can learn new things just as any other being, I don't agree it points to foresight, let along the degree we posess, I have a hard time picturing those crows up there thinking to itself "ahh I will wait until traffic dies down, it will be safer for me to do it then" more along the lines of "if I drop this here, then I get food".

Where is the evidence of the evolution of foresight? Physical evolution can be seen, I don't know of any documented cases of a being showing emotional evolution, which to me is what makes us human, not our physical form but our emotions such as love, compassion, guilt, and our creative thinking. If we came from apes then there was a point where this was developed millions of years ago, why has it not happened again? Why have animals not at least developed enough foresight to know that humans are bad for them as wipe us out? It would be survival after all, the highest trigger for evolution tot ake place.

As I have reiturated a few times, I am not claiming god programmed anything, let me be 100% clear on that as that is not my belief at all. My argument is that evolution is not as much fact as you want to believe, if its enough evidence for you then thats fine, I have no problems with that, but I still see holes in it that needs explaining before I call evolution the reason why we are who we are, not in our physical form, but our emotional and mental forms which truly make us human.


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## Mferko

summit said:


> Animals will do the least amount of work necessary to get their food source, this is a survival instict to expell the least amount of energy to get food, sounds very similar to what these crows are doing does it not? Again it comes down to survival, I do not dispute that a crow can learn to get their food from different sources if its easier, they can learn new things just as any other being, I don't agree it points to foresight, let along the degree we posess, I have a hard time picturing those crows up there thinking to itself "ahh I will wait until traffic dies down, it will be safer for me to do it then" more along the lines of "if I drop this here, then I get food".
> 
> Where is the evidence of the evolution of foresight? Physical evolution can be seen, I don't know of any documented cases of a being showing emotional evolution, which to me is what makes us human, not our physical form but our emotions such as love, compassion, guilt, and our creative thinking. If we came from apes then there was a point where this was developed millions of years ago, why has it not happened again? Why have animals not at least developed enough foresight to know that humans are bad for them as wipe us out? It would be survival after all, the highest trigger for evolution tot ake place.
> 
> As I have reiturated a few times, I am not claiming god programmed anything, let me be 100% clear on that as that is not my belief at all. My argument is that evolution is not as much fact as you want to believe, if its enough evidence for you then thats fine, I have no problems with that, but I still see holes in it that needs explaining before I call evolution the reason why we are who we are, not in our physical form, but our emotional and mental forms which truly make us human.


keep in mind this is a food source they would not otherwise be able to eat, it took foresight one way or another, there is no higher energy alternative for them they are physically unable to upen them
if you agree that nature is trying to expend the least amount of energy as possible (which is generally true, natural selection favors the energy spent on reproduction) how do you explain the laryngeal nerve in mammals going from the brain, looping around your heart and then going back up to your thyroid in your neck, thats not intelligent design that is stupid and it is the result of evolution of the 4 chambered heart, in giraffes that nerve is like 14 feet longer than it needs to be










Recurrent laryngeal nerve in giraffes
The path of the recurrent laryngeal nerve in giraffes. The laryngeal nerve is compensated for by subsequent tinkering from natural selection.

The recurrent laryngeal nerve is a fourth branch of the vagus nerve, which is a cranial nerve. In mammals, its path is extraordinarily long. As a part of the vagus nerve, it comes from the brain, passes through the neck down to heart, rounds the dorsal aorta and returns up to the larynx, again through the neck.

This path is suboptimal even for humans, but for giraffes it becomes even more suboptimal. Due to the lengths of their necks, the recurrent laryngeal nerve may be up to 4m long (13 ft), despite its optimal route being a distance of just several inches.

The indirect route of this nerve is the result of evolution of mammals from fish, which had no neck and had a relatively short nerve that innervated one gill slit and passed near the gill arch. Since then, gills have evolved into lungs and the gill arch has become the dorsal aorta in mammals.[38][39]

Route of the vas deferens
Route of the vas deferens from the testis to the penis

Similar to the laryngeal nerve in giraffes, the vas deferens is part of the male anatomy of many vertebrates; it transports sperm from the epididymis in anticipation of ejaculation. In humans, the vas deferens routes up from the testicle, looping over the ureter, and back down to the urethra and penis. It has been suggested that this is due to the descent of the testicles during the course of human evolution-likely associated with temperature. As the testicles descended, the vas deferens lengthened to accommodate the accidental "hook" over the ureter.[39][40]










or how about the eyeball, do you know we have blind spots the brain has to make up for because of the optic nerve, also the light has to pass through all of the 'wiring' before getting to the retina. evolution has corrected for it, but a designer would have to be a retard to design it like that.

the bottom line is even if you dont understand this one aspect of evolution doesnt mean its not a fact because it has already been observed and documented in so many individual cases, evolution has happened and is happening

also this guy that keeps going on about the trees has me wondering about our capacity for critical thinking, evolution has been proven without the fossil record that is just one piece of supporting evidence that turned us on to it.


----------



## Mferko

here are the results of a gallup poll, what do you suppose it suggests?


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## Mferko

and if you have a hard time believing crows are thinking, watch these, it will blow your mind


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## jkcichlid

Was planning to make a comment but figured I would be diagnosed "spectacularly ignorant" so I will hold off


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## Mferko

when it comes down to it people can believe whatever they want to, even if they want to believe the world is flat. regardless of your beliefs, facts are facts.
if your mind is already made up on this subject and you dont want to see any of the evidence its just a colossal waste of time trying to show it to you.
if however your unbiased on the subject and interested to see more of the evidence (which i find extremely interesting), check these out.

















ig·no·rant -adjective
lacking knowledge or information as to a particular subject or fact


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## curtisonrad19

I thought i would mention this, as i found it sorta funny. 
This mornign in my Eos lecture, my professor brought up a smilular topic. 
He went into detail as why there were fossils of an extinct whale on the top of an alpine mountin range. Though im not gonna retype my whole lectures notes (though it would be helpfull in studying  ). the reason was due to the shifting of plates and the creation of mountion ranges etc. Mind you, no flood was mentioned as a cause.

He then went on to call humans ignorant. Not just us, but the whole race. He said that no body could know everything about anything, and so we are ignorant. (Not exactly his words... his sounded better  but i hope his point was carried on)


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## Mferko

curtisonrad19 said:


> I thought i would mention this, as i found it sorta funny.
> This mornign in my Eos lecture, my professor brought up a smilular topic.
> He went into detail as why there were fossils of an extinct whale on the top of an alpine mountin range. Though im not gonna retype my whole lectures notes (though it would be helpfull in studying  ). the reason was due to the shifting of plates and the creation of mountion ranges etc. Mind you, no flood was mentioned as a cause.
> 
> He then went on to call humans ignorant. Not just us, but the whole race. He said that no body could know everything about anything, and so we are ignorant. (Not exactly his words... his sounded better  but i hope his point was carried on)


yep by definition we're all ignorant to many different subjects. facts that we are ignorant about are still facts, and we will never know it all because we are always making new discoveries.

was there a tree next to the whale btw? 
lol j/k


----------



## summit

Well Mferko, its been a fun debate I must say. In my opinion physical evolution exists, there is more than a reasonable amount of proof to conclude this, nor would I ever argue the overwhelming supporting evidence. I maintain we do not know enough about emotional evolution (foresight only being one of many), nor have any kind of conclusive evidence to truly identify evolution as directly responsibe for making humans the way they are emotionaly and the way they think creatively outside the box, so we will just have to agree to disagree on that, that being said I admit to not watching all the youtube videos, but if you can point me to one in particular to answer some of the questions in my previous post I would be happy to watch it, as they do interest me, other than that I will leave it with that, as this threads been taking up too much of my time!


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## Mferko

me too lol lots of time but i find it a very interesting subject so i dont mind THAT much as long as people have an open mind, so thanks for having an open mind, if i stumble on a video that relates directly to your question i'll share it but at this point theres so many its hard to remember


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## Momobobo

Krashy_Cichlids said:


> Explain the ones that are upside down, and trees won't live with dirt piled up around the trunk, or stand for millions of years. They rot.


I won't even bother reading the entire thread before adressing this. I believe we are talking about fossilzed or petrified trees correct? Well I just learned about these today in Bio and these are quite a common occurence. Doesn't take some "great" flood to create them.

And fossils don't show anything? So we have cold blooded large reptiles during a time where the earth is hotter (easiar to mantain body heat) with any mammels being incredibly small (unable to compete with larger lizards), then the ice age occurs, reptiles of all sorts die (due to low temperature) and mammels take reign and grow larger and furry (to mantain body heat). Is this not examples of evolution (adaption) to the enviroment?


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## Punkys Dad

I was a way for a few weeks and what happens...I miss this thread.


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## donjuan_corn

Krashy_Cichlids said:


> It sure is nice to know that mferko knows everything, but has no evidence to prove it. I agree with micro evolution, but what I would like to know is if birds came from lizards and such, where are all the in between species? We still have reptiles today, and we have birds but magically there are absolutely no in between species. Why is that? Mferko must know that since he knows everything else. When was the last documented case of a monkey turning into a man, I'd that is how it happens why has it magically stopped for the last 6000 years. Mferko says it only takes as little as 37 years for noticeable changes to occur. How did the solar system come about?


In the last 200 years we wiped out over 100,000 women because they were thought to be witches.

Man has a way of wiping out people that are different, a lot of monkeys learned how to wield weapons make fire and stay warm over the winter and some did not. Over a period of 6,000 years I'm pretty sure we could of wiped out the middle men/monkeys no problem. Survival of the fittest.


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## donjuan_corn

I'm on both sides, I saw a graph earlier that told me that you lose faith as you get older. I was Catholic raised, yet I questioned the Church and don't think I need to go to a over priced cathedral to believe in a higher power. 

At the same time I'm totally on the side of evolution. Hell, look at how many different races of humans we have. Look at the british, Over cast skys most of the year, not a lot of sun, what color were they before travelling accross the seas, South Africans, sun all year round almost and we got a different color. 

Now I believe in Evolution, but the unknown can not be proven by anyone, scientists nor priests, nor mferko! Big bang? Black Hole? give me a break, we don't even know what's in our deepest trenches on earth. 

Have you ever had a day where you were walking along and you stopped, took a breath air and were at bliss and everything was good and you were happy to be alive? I have. At that moment you could bring out the charts and prove it was something scientific that went on, but why would you?

The Church might not be right about where we came from, but the power of uniting a community for a common reason to promote being healthy, not cheating on your wife, not killing others, sharing with others and not stealing is a good reason to have faith, not for the reason as to why we are here but to have faith that we should live life to our fullest and not to live in a life of shit.

I am going to be having a baby soon, and my mother is all about Creationism, father is Darwin. I'm going to educate my baby with both, because we should all have a choice. 

Reptiles, Monkeys, Rats, Rocks and Micro organisms do what they must to survive. We watch t.v., invest money and go on fish forums and collect other species. We are a little out of Darwins loop, I believe. Start small slowly turn into a human over thousands of years and then kill the planet, GOOOOO HUMANS!! I am ashamed to be one. And believe it or not Science built most of the things that are going to kill us all, so it's a bit hard to be on sciences side.


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## Punkys Dad

donjuan_corn said:


> In the last 200 years we wiped out over 100,000 women because they were thought to be witches.
> 
> Man has a way of wiping out people that are different, a lot of monkeys learned how to wield weapons make fire and stay warm over the winter and some did not. Over a period of 6,000 years I'm pretty sure we could of wiped out the middle men/monkeys no problem. Survival of the fittest.


Stalin, Mao, & Pho Pot demonstrated that you don't have to be religious to commit genocidal atrocities, just a twisted social ideology. 115,000,000+ deaths between 1900 to 2000 AD.


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## Mferko

donjuan_corn said:


> The Church might not be right about where we came from, but the power of uniting a community for a common reason to promote being healthy, not cheating on your wife, not killing others, sharing with others and not stealing is a good reason to have faith, not for the reason as to why we are here but to have faith that we should live life to our fullest and not to live in a life of shit.


ehm, id argue those things are not a good reason to have faith, but a good reason to have MORALS!!!!!
lets keep in mind its not about uniting the entire community, but uniting one community against the others. look at the middle east. 
if there was some new religion that united the entire world, didnt preach lies, didnt rape little boys and cover it up, and taught that other species are as important as our own, i might sign up.



Punkys Dad said:


> Stalin, Mao, & Pho Pot demonstrated that you don't have to be religious to commit genocidal atrocities, just a twisted social ideology. 115,000,000+ deaths between 1900 to 2000 AD.


and the inquisition and salem witchhunts among others shows that just because your religious doesn't mean your a moral person
the root of morality doesnt lie in scripture, there are plenty of moral people who have been raised without religion


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## Punkys Dad

Mferko said:


> and the inquisition and salem witchhunts among others shows that just because your religious doesn't mean your a moral person
> the root of morality doesnt lie in scripture, there are plenty of moral people who have been raised without religion


True, all human beings have moral feelings regardless of religion or irreligion; it's called more simply a conscience. So when we do something that goes against that feeling we should tend to refrain. However our moral sense doesn't end there but believe in standards that exist beyond us in order to evaluate our moral feelings. Moral obligation is a belief that some things ought not to be done regardless of how a person feels about them regardless of community, culture, etc. So why do we think moral standards exist? Because we were created that way.
Evolutionary 'scholars' Dawkins hold the view Altruistic people who act unselfishly and cooperatively survive in greater numbers than those who are selfish and cruel and therefore the altruistic 'gene' is passed on until a great majority of the population felt that unselfish behavior is 'right'. So I could understand that an individual that expresses that altruistic behavior towards his own kin, family or clan so that they would survive to product greater numbers of descendants, however for evolutionary purposes there is an opposite behavior. Hostility towards people outside the group-should be just as widely considered moral and right behavior and yet today we believe in sacrificing resources and even life especially for someone not with our group - is right. Suppose a stranger fall into a river and we jump in after him, or feel guilty for not doing so. Most people will feel the obligation to do so even if that person is an enemy. So the question is how does a trait have come down by the process of natural selection? Such a person(s) would be less likely to survive to pass on their genes. So on the basis of evolutionary naturalism that kind of altruism should have died out of the human race long ago.
Evolution cannot account for the origin of our moral feelings, especially those external moral standards to which moral feelings are evaluated.


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## Momobobo

I have to say that that is the first arguement type point against standard Natural Selection Evolution I've ever seen. The idea of remorse over the dead is very common in the animal world (Elephants, cats and their litter, etc) and it is true that this would be actually a detrimintal response. I cannot think of a good statement to rebuttle it with...


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## Mferko

Punkys Dad said:


> True, all human beings have moral feelings regardless of religion or irreligion; it's called more simply a conscience. So when we do something that goes against that feeling we should tend to refrain. However our moral sense doesn't end there but believe in standards that exist beyond us in order to evaluate our moral feelings. Moral obligation is a belief that some things ought not to be done regardless of how a person feels about them regardless of community, culture, etc. So why do we think moral standards exist? Because we were created that way.
> Evolutionary 'scholars' Dawkins hold the view Altruistic people who act unselfishly and cooperatively survive in greater numbers than those who are selfish and cruel and therefore the altruistic 'gene' is passed on until a great majority of the population felt that unselfish behavior is 'right'. So I could understand that an individual that expresses that altruistic behavior towards his own kin, family or clan so that they would survive to product greater numbers of descendants, however for evolutionary purposes there is an opposite behavior. Hostility towards people outside the group-should be just as widely considered moral and right behavior and yet today we believe in sacrificing resources and even life especially for someone not with our group - is right. Suppose a stranger fall into a river and we jump in after him, or feel guilty for not doing so. Most people will feel the obligation to do so even if that person is an enemy. So the question is how does a trait have come down by the process of natural selection? Such a person(s) would be less likely to survive to pass on their genes. So on the basis of evolutionary naturalism that kind of altruism should have died out of the human race long ago.
> Evolution cannot account for the origin of our moral feelings, especially those external moral standards to which moral feelings are evaluated.


not true you should read the selfish gene, it discusses in more deal the evolution of altruism, theres lots of other books on the subject too but altruism is not only a human trait look at cleaner fish or monkeys cleaning each other, or birds who for the first year will be a nest helper and help the parents raise another batch of eggs before going to raise their own, it helps because your more likely to be altruistic to those with common genes to your own, and then those genes become more common. 
i disagree with the saving the enemy in the river thing too, i think youd find statistically a much higher % of people would jump in to save a relative than someone they knew they were not related to if by doing so their own life was at risk.


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## gklaw

Hey Matthew. 

Right or wrong, I have a good laugh at that attitude of an expecting father. I admire the open mind. Hope verything is well with pregnancy! Enjoy all the excitment of the evolution that is happening inside you beloved wife.

BTW. I do believe in some of the "science" behind the evolution theory. I am still amazed how complicated minds like ours can develop and grow out the the love of two human beings who simply evolved out of the primeval soup.

Make me wonder if someone or something must have masterminded all that we called objective scientific facts? Is natural phenomenons really all that "natural" ?

If our fish can understand science, I wonder if they could figure where they come from. What will they make out of the creatures outside of their own little self-sustained natural worlds that seems to be self-sustained by some natural regularities?


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## Punkys Dad

Mferko said:


> not true you should read the selfish gene, it discusses in more deal the evolution of altruism, theres lots of other books on the subject too but altruism is not only a human trait look at cleaner fish or monkeys cleaning each other, or birds who for the first year will be a nest helper and help the parents raise another batch of eggs before going to raise their own, it helps because your more likely to be altruistic to those with common genes to your own, and then those genes become more common.
> i disagree with the saving the enemy in the river thing too, i think you'd find statistically a much higher % of people would jump in to save a relative than someone they knew they were not related to if by doing so their own life was at risk.


I'll take that under advisement. I would jump in after my Mom rather than an enemy if the situation that they were both in peril at the same time. As separate events both.

Yes I am aware that altruistic behavior could bring many indirect reciprocal benefits to the practitioner from others but this could not account for our motivation to practice such acts when know one knows about them. Other contended that sacrificial behavior benefits the entire group or society to pass on its genetic code. However there is a building consensus that natural selection does not work on whole populations let alone complex populations since Dawkins 1976 _Selfish gene_ book (I'll add it to my long reading list)

Please you can check any of these out;
Philip Kitcher, V_aulting Ambition: Sociobiology and the quest for human nature_ 1985.
H & S Rose, _Alas poor Darwin: Arguments against evolutionary Psychology_ 2000.
John Dupre, _Human Nature and the Limits of Science_ 2001.
Meanwhile I'll will be into a former atheist, Francis Collin's book: _The Language of God_.


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## Mferko

the selfish gene is a great book, so is his latest one the greatest show on earth i highly recommend both

i'll keep yours in mind tho i'll read a review of them before the actual book 

heres a review of the selfish gene and the description of chapter 10 from it
http://www.scitechexplained.com/201...-genes-programmed-by-memes-no-god-supervenes/

"Chapter 10: The "I help you, you'd better help me!" game of animal symbiotics, and how "The domain of Danger" suffices at explaining the appearance of altruism. Why do we see animals from open fields like the Savanna living in herds? Is it just a kind of group selection where they cleverly decide to join forces in order to curdle together their frail groups so to obtain a stronger one? Buffaloes, zebras, elephants are just some examples of survival machines that decided to live this way. Additionally, birds fly in flocks, emperor penguins huddle together to escape wind and conserve heat, and sterile worker bees do backbreaking jobs so that their Queen has sufficient food and protection. It all looks like too much of a perfect theatrical act: it's all designed, it seems, for the wellness of the group. This chapter will show us how these survival machines just seem as if they're working for the good of the group but in reality they are just following the urges commanded by their selfish genes.

W.D. Hamilton, in a paper called "Geometry of the Selfish Herd", introduced the concept of domain of danger. In his model this represented the hexagonal area surrounding each and every one animal in a given group that wonders the open landscape. Hamilton describes it as that area of the ground in which any point is nearer to that individual than it is to any other individual. The smaller the area, the smaller the danger. Unsurprisingly the domain of danger of the animals at the edges of the group are much larger than of those at the center, so there will be a tendency for each animal to position itself in the center of the group. This of course leads to a more compact group, a herd.

The same theory can be applied to all kinds of wild life aggregations: bird that fly in flocks, fish that swim in schools, emperor penguins huddling together, they can all be explained using this simple model. The model says that your domain of danger can shrink or expand depending on your position relative to the group and on your behavior when predators approach. We should expect, therefore, that each individual survival machine will act in its own interest and will work to shrink its domain of danger. This, consequently, would lead to a more compact group. Chapter 10 analyzes this in more detail. "


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## Mferko

i think you would also be interested in The Moral Animal by Robert Wright


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## Punkys Dad

Mferko said:


> i think you would also be interested in The Moral Animal by Robert Wright


Thanks, I'll check it out.



jenle said:


> I believe in evolution but I also believe that it was guided by God.





gklaw said:


> If one must juxtapose "evolutionism" against "creationism", then I must say that both need faith. I.e. trusting in something we cannot totally prove, something we cannot see.
> 
> To those who could not find the faith to believe in a creator, there is little choice but to put their faith in evolution or believe in nothing.
> 
> To those who find evolutionism not credible, they could choose to believe in a creator or believing again in nothing at all.
> 
> So it is our personal choice to put our faith in: (1) in evolution, (2) in a creator, or (3) in nothing at all.
> 
> Adaptation, mutation, micro-evolution whatever we may name them are not evidence against the possibility of a creator. An almighty creator can freely choose to create by whatever means he/she pleases to.
> 
> Implicit in this discussion is the debate of the Biblical account: Are human being specially created and intimated connected to their creator or are they just like all other animals, the mere products of chance and probabilities?
> 
> Just my humble opinion and hope to point out what is implicit in the discussion. By no mean trying to turn this into a religious debate forum.


Perhaps we should get away from the Conflict Model  of this issue of Evolution OR Creation, clearly there are some people hold both approaches. I suggest the Title to be 'Evolution, Creation, or Somewhere-in-Between'. The group that doesn't get much media press are those that hold on to both and regard them as two faucets of the same thing. To my surprise is that the Vatican does acquiesce to Evolutionary theory  but does not accept the Philosophical Naturalism it implies (that is..all good and bad behavior, morality, etc. are mere products of evolution). Understandable. I cannot agree with Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens etc, who adamantly contend that one cannot be religious and scientifically minded at the same time.


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## Mferko

exactly, even the Vatican cant argue with the facts, if only they would make more of an effort to explain to their "flock" (i find it strange they use the same word that describes a group of sheep) that the stories are not meant to be taken literally, they were passed on by word of mouth for many generations, and are not based on facts - there are morals and lessons in the stories that certainly have value but people should know they are not to be taken literally

"Creation" as in the title is meant in the biblical sense of a skyman sculpting a man from some dirt, then switching it up and making the second human from the first ones rib.

unfortunately because evolution teaches us for a fact that that is not what happened, we are stuck in the conflict model, and those that choose to believe in both are choosing to be wrong. they have the right to be wrong tho, they can believe whatever they want. facts are still facts.

maybe Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens need to coin a new term, "selectively scientific"


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## donjuan_corn

I can say that bucket is red to you, but you could say it's light red or dark red or lipstick red, and that's just two people never mind thousands. You aren't suppose to take the bible literally, as you said, especially the old testament.

It's a good book, but what is also great in that book is how right it is about how we would be experiencing the end of days right about now, looks like it in my opinion. ooooo we need to start another topic about the Mayens! (i don't know if I spelt that right)


----------



## Mferko

donjuan_corn said:


> I can say that bucket is red to you, but you could say it's light red or dark red or lipstick red, and that's just two people never mind thousands. You aren't suppose to take the bible literally, as you said, especially the old testament.
> 
> It's a good book, but what is also great in that book is how right it is about how we would be experiencing the end of days right about now, looks like it in my opinion. ooooo we need to start another topic about the Mayens! (i don't know if I spelt that right)


lol dont even get me started on 2012 or end of days prophecy, people just like to be afraid of something it seems, hellfire, end of days, ghosts, etc
:tinfoil:


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## donjuan_corn

Ya but there are a lot of dead people because of nature lately, am I wrong?


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## Mferko

donjuan_corn said:


> Ya but there are a lot of dead people because of nature lately, am I wrong?


what does that prove? there are also more people than ever before and the world is better connected than ever before so that you hear about all of the events.

tell you what, you make the mayan end of the world thread, and i'll resurrect it for a good laugh in 2013


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## donjuan_corn

It gives the people who have faith in the bible a sign as of what's to come. They will always find this, but I've been alive for 29 years and I've seen some of the largest natural disasters in the last 10 years.

I don't need to have faith to see that the world is changing and I'm not sure if it's for the good.


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## Mferko

enjoy life why be scared of things from bronze age fairy tales, they've been saying the world is going to end for thousands of years why fret over the possibility of it happening in the incredibly small time frame that is our lifetime?
the world will end in 4-5billion years when our sun goes supernova, we may go extinct sooner but life on earth will go on there have been several mass extinctions in the past, life goes on.


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## big_bubba_B

well actualy a little sooner there is a galaxy that is heading in our direction will be here in 2 billion years . but why be scared nothing we can do when it is our tme . so enjoy life watch your fish hug your gf or wife . kick the neibors dog when it poops on your lawn . we only got one life might as well make it good


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## Mferko

big_bubba_B said:


> well actualy a little sooner there is a galaxy that is heading in our direction will be here in 2 billion years . but why be scared nothing we can do when it is our tme . so enjoy life watch your fish hug your gf or wife . kick the neibors dog when it poops on your lawn . we only got one life might as well make it good


exactly

i must say i am excited to see how the media hypes up 2012 i think its going to be funny as hell

i was watching an episode of wife swap with my wife and there was a family on there where the daughter was watching a show on 2012 and the mother came in, believed all the hype and started preparing to kill zombies in 2012, not kidding, they actually are teaching their kids to kill zombies and they have taken out all the loans they can find "do not pay till 2012-2013" etc in order to stockpile supplies because they think they will never have to pay them back, the kids arent allowed to have friends over because they might find out about the supplies and come there when they get attacked by zombies.

talk about a recipe for going bankrupt and raising the most socially awkward kids ever


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## big_bubba_B

there americans what do u expect lol


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## donjuan_corn

Who said they were scared? Bring on the terror!! I'm saying that a lot of religion points to this century for some reason and there have been a lot of records broken for disasters recently and yadda yadda yadda. 

Religion doesn't point out different dates every century, just this one and that won't change history of what has been forcasted. The mayans said end of the world, but technically that could mean the end of where they lived because they didn't know about the earth did they. So maybe tsunami in Mayan territory??


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## Mferko

donjuan_corn said:


> Who said they were scared? Bring on the terror!! I'm saying that a lot of religion points to this century for some reason and there have been a lot of records broken for disasters recently and yadda yadda yadda.
> 
> Religion doesn't point out different dates every century, just this one and that won't change history of what has been forcasted. The mayans said end of the world, but technically that could mean the end of where they lived because they didn't know about the earth did they. So maybe tsunami in Mayan territory??


you need to read about the mayans and not just the hype, its based on the mayan 'long count,' instead of using years like we do they had a 5 digit number system starting with 0.0.0.0.0 which corresponds to the modern date of August 11th 3114 BC
the numbers 13 was significant to the mayans and the long count ends on 13.0.0.0.0 which corresponds to December 21st, 2012

due to all the hype its very hard to find accurate information on the internet its best to go to the library and get it in text, and not in the fiction section 
hear it from the host of nova Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson


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## big_bubba_B

it says it is the return of the old ones or something like that doesent say everyone is sol so see ya


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## gmachine19

What I'm afraid is that the mass suicide in the movie 2012 would actually come true in some places of the earth...


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## big_bubba_B

yes i just hope that doesent happen


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## Mferko

gmachine19 said:


> What I'm afraid is that the mass suicide in the movie 2012 would actually come true in some places of the earth...


exactly, in the minds of crazy people prophecies can be self-fulfilling


----------



## big_bubba_B

look at those people who killed themselves so they could go to the so called mother ship in that one cult . or the crazy guy in jones town picnic.


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## Mferko

big_bubba_B said:


> look at those people who killed themselves so they could go to the so called mother ship in that one cult . or the crazy guy in jones town picnic.


lol...these kind of people?


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## Mferko

lol just saw this thought it was funny


----------



## Punkys Dad

donjuan_corn said:


> I can say that bucket is red to you, but you could say it's light red or dark red or lipstick red, and that's just two people never mind thousands. You aren't suppose to take the bible literally, as you said, especially the old testament.
> 
> It's a good book, but what is also great in that book is how right it is about how we would be experiencing the end of days right about now, looks like it in my opinion. ooooo we need to start another topic about the Mayens! (i don't know if I spelt that right)


I wouldn't take the book of Genesis literally since it is a narrative genre and it is quite silent on the actual nuts and bolts of creation or the time line to which everything in the first ten chapters take place so understanding the context is important. Lots of people tend to read things into the book that are not there or make some sort of esoteric interpretation that are not consistent within early Hebrew thinking.



donjuan_corn said:


> It gives the people who have faith in the bible a sign as of what's to come. They will always find this, but I've been alive for 29 years and I've seen some of the largest natural disasters in the last 10 years.
> 
> I don't need to have faith to see that the world is changing and I'm not sure if it's for the good.


The Bible (Daniel, Revelation, etc.) never states an actual date, but warns to watch for the signs.

I think the moderators would like us to make a different thread to talk eschatology. 
Bring it on ...

*BOOM!* 

That was the Heaven's gate cult that believed that a starship was behind the Hale-Bopp comet.


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## Momobobo

2012 is as hyped up as Y2K, I see no reason to believe in it. And the Bible stated that the Earth was only around 6000 years old. That is so obviously not true that I don't see reason to believe anything else in it.


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## bingerz

2012 was crazy!! my jaw drops to the floor imagining destruction at the global scale.


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## Mferko

lol, someone should indeed start a new 2012 thread i have a feeling it will be good for a laugh


there is a certain type of mind that is beyond reason and no matter what evidence is presented it does not matter to them. to those people all you can really do is smile and nod. 

perfect example is Kurt Wise, a person you might call "selectively scientific," the guy has a doctorate in geology from Harvard, hes learned the truth about how the earth was formed. and yet he believes "that the earth is young, and the universe is young, I would suggest that it’s less than ten thousand years in age."

 what?
he goes on to say...

"...if all the evidence in the universe turns against creationism, I would be the first to admit it, but I would still be a creationist because that is what the Word of God seems to indicate"

now there is a brain that needs studying.


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## donjuan_corn

THE END OF THE WORLD: OCTOBER 21st, 2011 By God's grace and tremendous mercy, He is giving us advanced warning as to what He is about to do. May 21st, 2011 will begin this 5-month period of horrible torment for all the inhabitants of the earth. It will be on May 21st that God will raise up all the dead that have ever died from their graves. Earthquakes will ravage the whole world as the earth will no longer conceal its dead (Isaiah 26:21). People who died as saved individuals will experience the resurrection of their bodies and immediately leave this world to forever be with the Lord. Those who died unsaved will be raised up as well, but only to have their lifeless bodies scattered about the face of all the earth. Death will be everywhere. 

oooo, i hope a lot of dead people don't come back ;0)


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## Mferko

when this day passes and nothing happens will you question the knowledge contained in that book? i sure as hell hope so.

as momobo points out, since the vast majority of it has been shown to be false, why believe this part?
this thread already demonstrates they got the beginning wrong, why would you expect them to get the ending right?

listen to Galileo - “The Bible was written to show us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.”


----------



## summit

Mferko said:


> there is a certain type of mind that is beyond reason and no matter what evidence is presented it does not matter to them. to those people all you can really do is smile and nod.
> QUOTE]
> 
> There is something I can agree with you on, although it might hit closer to home that you might think though


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## donjuan_corn

Man defends what he has created until the very moment, where what he has created destroys him. The imperfect can not make the perfect, the perfect wouldn't need to make the perfect.


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## Mferko

you didnt answer my question corn, what will you say in 2013, when nothing has happened? do you wait for someone to make up a new date?
why believe one part when most of the others have been shown to be false? it makes no sense to me.
religion is a meme and i find them interesting

check this out to learn about memes





i dont think religion is bad, i think religious fundamentalism/extremism is bad, and that starts with taking scripture literally...
these are the kind of religious people we need more of: for Bishop Spong its not about salvation its about bettering yourself and becoming more human and moral
this one is great:


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## donjuan_corn

I never said it was going to happen, I was giving what is said by the church and deligates, I think we are all going to be fine, but back to the original point i made was, HAVEN"T you noticed a lot more Natural disasters lately?


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## Mferko

donjuan_corn said:


> I never said it was going to happen, I was giving what is said by the church and deligates, I think we are all going to be fine, but back to the original point i made was, HAVEN"T you noticed a lot more Natural disasters lately?


i did address that, go back and read it.

i believe that earths climate is changing, that as i said there are more people than ever before and they are clustering together in massive cities, lots of them not located in very good spots ie in areas that are known to flood every 100 years or on fault lines, beside volcanoes, etc etc and that disasters will continue to happen.

look at delta/richmond, not exactly the smartest place to build a permanant settlement, i would never buy a house there, why? because statistically it floods every 100 years. this info is available to the public, here is a map: if your living on the floodplain, its a good idea to be prepared for a flood. we do have ***** that they hope will protect us against previous flood levels but what if one fails or the next flood is a bit larger? or we get an earthquake shortly before the flood and there isnt time to repair *****?









if we continue to do stupid things like that, your going to continue to see alot of horrible things happen on the tv, it doesnt mean the world is ending it means we should think a bit harder about where we live and how to prepare for the events that are likely to happen over long periods of time.

once again tho this is off topic so please make a new thread for this discussion.


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## Diztrbd1

big_bubba_B said:


> there americans what do u expect lol


that shows evolution has a long way to go lol. As an American I hate comments as such, though I can see the humor in it if I were born Canadian I suppose :bigsmile: Do you really think there aren't people with the same mindset about 2012 in Canada or anywhere else for that matter?? Apparently you haven't been to Surrey.......j/k Surrey haha Anyway sorry...forgot to leave my American pride at the border.....it comes out from time to time


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## big_bubba_B

i have been all over vancouver. well actualy i have been all over canada and usa . so i have sen all sorts of deffrent types of people . and what amazes me is some people in the states dont even know what is out side of there town or country and so many people ask me where , alberta and b.c is , isnt that next to o-n-t-a-r-i-o lol . or where do i cross the bridge into canada . also alot think the green grass stops at the boarder and the snow begins.


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## Diztrbd1

lol just giving you a hard time Bubba...I know what ya mean dude, I've met them people on both sides of the border, definitely some clueless people on this planet. Actually one of my best buddies back home thinks that way bout the grass stopping at the border lmao


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## Punkys Dad

Mferko said:


> the selfish gene is a great book, so is his latest one the greatest show on earth i highly recommend both
> 
> i'll keep yours in mind tho i'll read a review of them before the actual book
> 
> heres a review of the selfish gene and the description of chapter 10 from it
> Book Review
> 
> "Chapter 10: The "I help you, you'd better help me!" game of animal symbiotics, and how "The domain of Danger" suffices at explaining the appearance of altruism. Why do we see animals from open fields like the Savanna living in herds? Is it just a kind of group selection where they cleverly decide to join forces in order to curdle together their frail groups so to obtain a stronger one? Buffaloes, zebras, elephants are just some examples of survival machines that decided to live this way. Additionally, birds fly in flocks, emperor penguins huddle together to escape wind and conserve heat, and sterile worker bees do backbreaking jobs so that their Queen has sufficient food and protection. It all looks like too much of a perfect theatrical act: it's all designed, it seems, for the wellness of the group. This chapter will show us how these survival machines just seem as if they're working for the good of the group but in reality they are just following the urges commanded by their selfish genes.
> 
> W.D. Hamilton, in a paper called "Geometry of the Selfish Herd", introduced the concept of domain of danger. In his model this represented the hexagonal area surrounding each and every one animal in a given group that wonders the open landscape. Hamilton describes it as that area of the ground in which any point is nearer to that individual than it is to any other individual. The smaller the area, the smaller the danger. Unsurprisingly the domain of danger of the animals at the edges of the group are much larger than of those at the center, so there will be a tendency for each animal to position itself in the center of the group. This of course leads to a more compact group, a herd.
> 
> The same theory can be applied to all kinds of wild life aggregations: bird that fly in flocks, fish that swim in schools, emperor penguins huddling together, they can all be explained using this simple model. The model says that your domain of danger can shrink or expand depending on your position relative to the group and on your behavior when predators approach. We should expect, therefore, that each individual survival machine will act in its own interest and will work to shrink its domain of danger. This, consequently, would lead to a more compact group. Chapter 10 analyzes this in more detail. "


Adapted from Henry W. Middleton,

Dawkins acknowledges that on the surface Darwinism seems to be inadequate to explain goodness and morality. After all, what is the survival value of such sentiments? He nonetheless attempts to explain morality through his "selfish gene" theory by which genes ensure their own survival by encouraging altruistic behavior, such as through reciprocal altruism or aiding one's genetic kin.

Dawkins also argues that if our morality is grounded in our "Darwinian past" then we can expect to find universal morals that transcend cultural and religious boundaries. He cites studies that allegedly demonstrate that religious people do not differ from atheists in their morals. He concludes that "we do not need God in order to be good-or evil."

Considering his atheistic assumptions, it makes sense that Dawkins would attempt to base morality on evolution. However, his argument does not do justice to the true nature of morality: (1) he does not adequately explain how natural selection can produce moral obligation; (2) he confuses the relationship between morality and either God or religion; and (3) he does not adequately explain why being moral is important.

PROBLEM ONE: BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN WHAT IS AND WHAT SHOULD BE

Dawkins's theory addresses whether actions either promote or hinder the survival of genes. This is merely a pragmatic criterion, but morality deals with concepts of right and wrong, not useful and not useful. No one consistently lives as if morals are merely based on survival value. People do regard some actions as genuinely right or wrong. Dawkins does not explain how the survival value of an action translates into the moral status of that action. As Dawkins admits elsewhere, "science has no methods for deciding what is ethical. That is a matter for individuals and for society."

Dawkins theorizes in terms of pragmatic survival value, but he misses this problem when he criticizes religion in terms of actual right and wrong:

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

These considerations fill me with despair. They seem to show the immense power of religion, and especially the religious upbringing of children, to divide people and foster historic enmities and hereditary vendettas.

Joshua's action was a deed of barbaric genocide.

A More Pessimistic Perspective

Dawkins demonstrates a very different attitude in River out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life (published eleven years before The God Delusion). He explains how a female digger wasp lays eggs inside a caterpillar so that her larvae can eat it. She paralyzes the caterpillar but does not kill it so that the body remains fresh. Dawkins speculates that if the wasp's venom included an anesthetic, then the caterpillar would not suffer while being eaten, but "nature is not cruel, only piteously indifferent. This is one of the hardest lessons for humans to learn. We cannot admit that things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous-indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose."

In The God Delusion, Dawkins advocates seeking the greatest good for the greatest number of people, but in River out of Eden he explains that natural selection does not promote such behavior. He draws from the economic concept of utility functions (in other words, whatever a given system maximizes) and explains that natural selection maximizes the survival of DNA. He then proposes the concept of "God's Utility Function." He says that we can imagine that creatures were created by a Divine Engineer and then we can reverse engineer what he was trying to maximize. He applies this to what he considers to be the instability of cooperative effort:

Humans have a rather endearing tendency to assume that welfare means group welfare, that "good" means the good of society, the future well-being of the species or even of the ecosystem. God's Utility Function, as derived from a contemplation of the nuts and bolts of natural selection, turns out to be sadly at odds with such a utopian vision. To be sure, there are occasions when genes may maximize their selfish welfare at their level, by programming unselfish cooperation, or even self-sacrifice, by the organism at its level. But group welfare is always a fortuitous consequence, not a primary drive. This is the meaning of the "selfish gene."

Dawkins returns to his example of the wasp and caterpillar and says that "Nature is neither kind nor unkind. She is neither against suffering nor for it. Nature is not interested one way or the other in suffering, unless it affects the survival of DNA." He describes the crash of a school bus and quotes a writer who argues that the horror of such tragedies confirms that we live in a world of values, because if the world were just electrons, then there would be no problem of evil. Dawkins responds:

On the contrary, if the universe were just electrons and selfish genes, meaningless tragedies like the crashing of this bus are exactly what we should expect, along with equally meaningless good fortune. Such a universe would be neither evil nor good in intention. It would manifest no intentions of any kind. In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. As that unhappy poet A. E. Housman put it:

For Nature, heartless, witless Nature
Will neither know nor care.

DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. And we dance to its music.

How can natural selection be the basis of morality (The God Delusion) if it is completely unconcerned with kindness and suffering (River out of Eden)? Dawkins shows some intellectual honesty (considering his atheistic assumptions) regarding morality in River out of Eden, but he appears to abandon it in The God Delusion. The reason for this change is unclear.

Morals Need a Solid Foundation

Paul Copan argues that evolutionary naturalism can describe how people behave, but it cannot prescribe how people should behave. In order to say that an action is good or evil, one needs an objective and universal moral standard that transcends individual people and individual societies. It must also be personal in nature. Moral standards deal with right and wrong, what should and should not be done. That implies a choice that requires personality and consciousness. A transcendent moral standard would therefore need to be grounded in a conscious, personal, and transcendent reality. Christians find this in God-the only place where such a standard can be found.

If God does not exist, then as Francis Schaeffer explains, ethics merely explain what is rather than what should be. There is then no objective difference between kindness and cruelty because there is no standard. The very terms "kind" and "cruel" would be meaningless. As Norman Geisler and Frank Turek argue, atheists rule out a transcendent Lawgiver in advance: This creates a problem: "While they may believe in an objective right and wrong, they have no way to justify such a belief (unless they admit a Moral Law Giver, at which point they cease to be atheists)" (emphasis in original).

Continued


----------



## Punkys Dad

Continued 

Adapted from Henry W. Middleton


PROBLEM TWO: CONFUSING GOD AND RELIGION

In some places in The God Delusion Dawkins argues that God does not need to exist in order for people to be moral, and in other places he argues that people do not need religion or belief in God in order to be moral. He appears to use these two conditions interchangeably:

As we shall see, the way people respond to these moral tests, and their inability to articulate their reasons, seems largely independent of their religious beliefs or lack of them.

The main conclusion of Hauser and Singer’s study was that there is no statistically significant difference between atheists and religious believers in making these judgments. This seems compatible with the view, which I and many others hold, that we do not need God in order to be good—or evil.

You have fatally undermined your claim that God is necessary for us to be good. I suspect quite a lot of religious people do think religion is what motivates them to be good.

Whatever its cause, the manifest phenomenon of Zeitgeist progression is more than enough to undermine the claim that we need God in order to be good, or to decide what is good.

The distinction between these two conditions is significant. As explained above, objective morality requires a transcendent foundation in God. This is true regardless of a person’s specific religious beliefs, or lack thereof, and despite differing cultural standards. In the Christian worldview (to which Dawkins responds more than to any other religious worldview), God created mankind, and He has revealed Himself not only through the written revelation in the Bible and the incarnation of Jesus, but also through nature and mankind’s moral conscience. For example, the apostle Paul explains in Romans 2:13–16 that the Gentiles who do not have the written law are nonetheless inwardly aware of God’s moral law.

If God exists and has given mankind a moral conscience, then people will be aware of His moral law, despite differing cultural and religious standards. Human morality has a divine foundation, not only for Christians, Jews, and Muslims, but also for atheists. As Paul Copan explains, atheists can discern an objective difference between right and wrong without reference to special revelation (such as written scripture), but they lack “a proper metaphysical context” for such an affirmation, a context that is provided in the biblical affirmation that God exists and has created mankind in His image. Someone may be aware of morals without religion but not without God.

PROBLEM THREE: WHY EVEN BOTHER BEING MORAL?

Most atheists are not guilty of the immoral deeds perpetrated by atheistic regimes, but beyond evolutionary pragmatism and public pressure, what prevents a person from being immoral if atheism is true? Dawkins admits that evolution does not produce such virtues as generosity and universal love, but he argues that we have evolved to the point where we can rebel against our DNA and teach such values. However, he does not indicate why we should rebel and move beyond our evolutionary heritage.

If nature does not care about suffering, then why not be cruel if it is beneficial for the individual person or society? History provides numerous examples of cruelty and oppression by perpetrators who saw personal or societal benefit in their actions (such as Hitler’s “Final Solution”). Alister McGrath notes that “one of the greatest ironies of the twentieth century is that many of the most deplorable acts of murder, intolerance, and repression of that century were carried out by those who thought that religion was murderous, intolerant, and repressive—and thus sought to remove it from the face of the planet as a humanitarian act.” Dawkins argues that humans have progressed morally since the times of Genghis Khan and Hitler and will continue to progress, but he needs a standard by which to judge between moral systems. C. S. Lewis explains:

The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard, saying that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other. But the standard that measures two things is something different from either. You are, in fact, comparing them both with some Real Morality, admitting that there is such a thing as a real Right, independent of what people think, and that some people’s ideas get nearer to that real Right than others.

Dawkins does not provide a clear standard. He supports a utilitarian ethic by which one should seek the greatest good for the greatest number of people, but he does not explain how to judge which consequences are good and which are bad. Lewis argues that a moral standard exists beyond human convention: “It begins to look as if we shall have to admit that there is more than one kind of reality; that, in this particular case, there is something above and beyond the ordinary facts of men’s behavior, and yet quite definitely real—a real law, which none of us made, but which we find pressing on us.”

Dawkins also does not have a rational basis for moral values if people are the products of impersonal, random, evolutionary processes. He attempts to argue that natural selection is the very opposite of a chance process. Granted, if natural selection determines which genes survive based on their survival value, then it does not operate according to pure chance, but there are two problems. First, chance mutations will determine whether or not a gene arises as a candidate at all, even if natural selection itself is not a chance process. Second, Dawkins appeals to chance to explain how the first hereditary molecule arose and why one universe is favorable to life while another is not. He argues that chance (he also calls it “luck”) in the origin of life is not a significant problem because it only needs to happen once, while natural selection is a continuing process. This may reduce the role of chance, but it does not escape the reality of chance and the problem that it creates for objective morality. Life is still the product of chance.

In Dawkins’s model, morals are byproducts of evolution, which means that they are mere conventions. Nothing is genuinely right or wrong. An action is merely pragmatic or not pragmatic, desirable or not desirable (but pragmatic or desirable for whom? Who decides?). People are merely accidents of evolution, and there is nothing wrong with a stronger (more “fit”) accident oppressing a weaker (less “fit”) accident in order to move ahead. In fact, that would be natural selection at work.

THE REALITY OF MORALS

Every person is aware that there is a genuine difference between right and wrong. As Paul Copan explains, “an ethic rooted in nature appears to leave us with arbitrary morality. Theism, on the other hand, begins with value; so bridging the is-ought gulf is a nonissue” (emphasis in original). God did not arbitrarily declare a standard of right and wrong, and He did not discover that standard. Instead, the standard that He has revealed is an expression of His eternally holy, just, and loving nature. Greg Bahnsen states that “as Christians we have an absolute, unchanging, holy God who has revealed an absolute, unchanging, holy law to provide an absolute, unchanging, holy foundation for our ethical outlook and our moral conduct.”

Christians have an absolute, unshakable, and unchanging standard of morality. The atheist does not have such a basis. Gary Habermas argues:

One may have a strong, personal disgust for eating eggplant, but such an act is far from being immoral. Similarly, what we commonly view as evil in the world on an atheistic ethical system amounts to personal distaste, not to an objective problem for theism. Atheists have lost their favorite argument against theism.

To summarize briefly, we cannot have it both ways: we can accept absolute morality and face the strong possibility of the theistic universe, or we can deny it and acknowledge that we cannot lay evil at God’s feet, for there would be no such thing as objectively recognized wickedness. Either way, atheism receives a serious blow.

It is true that some people have committed atrocities in the name of Christ, but they acted contrary to the teachings of Christ. This illustrates the depravity inherent in the heart of every person and the need for Christians to continually strive to serve Christ more fully. Atheism does not account for mankind’s fallen nature, and it does not provide an adequate basis for morality or for the concepts of good and evil. As Joel McDurmon notes, “The atheist has no Golden Rule because he has no Golden Ruler.” When morality is divorced from its foundation in God, mankind ultimately has no stable foundation on which to judge the good and the bad. The Christian does have such a standard.


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## Illbuyourcatfish

I'm surprised a thread like this is allowed. Most sites I go to don't allow political or religious debate.


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## neven

for those who do not wish to see this thread can easily just not read it, by looking through it you should be aware that there will be conflicting views, some heated arguements and what not. if you cant keep cool headed or simply get offended by these topics than just ignore it. The mods have allowed it to quietly be here, but they also have put their foot down in regards to thread titles and attacking responses.


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## davefrombc

Politics and religion are ok, as long as discussion/ debate is kept civil . As Neven said . . if you don't like the subject, ignore it, and go on to what you are interested in .


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## big_bubba_B

most so called religious people are two faced and hypocritical and they say don't judge other people , if u don't where a suite and tie to church they look down on you and also if u are not interested in what they have to say you are a heathen , or wont let peoples child play with another, there mostly all phonies in my book


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## cpool

big_bubba_B said:


> most so called religious people are two faced and hypocritical and they say don't judge other people , if u don't where a suite and tie to church they look down on you and also if u are not interested in what they have to say you are a heathen , or wont let peoples child play with another, there mostly all phonies in my book


Yup you are right, there are religious people who are two faced and hypocritical. I as a Chirstian am more than willing to admit that. Sadly that is a reality of a orginization that has 1 billion people, as some people just don't get the message, or have yet to grasp the concept of forgiveness and or judgement. By the way God doesn't care what you wear to church or outside of church for that matter, only some people do.


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## Mferko

Punkys Dad said:


> Christians have an absolute, unshakable, and unchanging standard of morality.


thats BS, some of the least moral people ive met were christians that believed as long as they got on their knees and prayed at the end of the night all would be forgiven. how moral is it for the pope to tell AIDS ravaged Africa not to use condoms? how moral is it for the sexual abuse of little boys to go on for centuries getting covered up, or what went on in the Canadian residential school system? how about the Spanish inquisition? Salem witchhunts? the crusades? religion was responsible for the dark ages ffs, now they claim to be enlightened, its a joke.

when it comes down to it, theyre just too afraid of hellfire to think for themselves, so they go around trying to bend their bronze age beliefs to look like truth.

there is no denying evolution, and even if you dont understand how some things evolved, that does not disprove it.

show me your skyman.


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## cpool

Mferko said:


> when it comes down to it, theyre just too afraid of hellfire to think for themselves, so they go around trying to bend their bronze age beliefs to look like truth.
> QUOTE]
> 
> You've got me, how did you know?


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## cpool

Mferko said:


> there is no denying evolution, and even if you dont understand how some things evolved, that does not disprove it.
> 
> QUOTE]
> 
> So what you are saying is it takes "Faith" to believe in Evolution.


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## dZilla

cpool said:


> Mferko said:
> 
> 
> 
> there is no denying evolution, and even if you dont understand how some things evolved, that does not disprove it.
> 
> QUOTE]
> 
> So what you are saying is it takes "Faith" to believe in Evolution.
> 
> 
> 
> I don't think its about faith... and I don't think people that talk about evolution believe it to be the be all end all of the topic.... There's the possibility that that is the answer..... the idea that this is the right answer and scientist will continue to try to prove or disprove it.
> 
> "Creationism" or non-evolutionary thought is that things are the way they are.... This is how everything started no changing it.... Adam and Eve etc... etc....
> 
> For one to close their mind on the mere possibility of something like evolution is ridiculous.
> 
> Also some people need to seperate in this conversation things about religion outside of the "creationism vs. evolution" talk, it seems like no other organization in the world void of religion ever did anything bad.... (in reference to Spanish Inquisition, Salem witch hunts etc....)... Nazism???? Russian Communism???? --- trust me atheist can be just as bad lol
> 
> And yes Evolution is only a theory.... gravity is a theory as well.... throw yourself off a bridge see how true that theory is....
> 
> Anyways thats my 2 ga-billion cents
Click to expand...


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## Illbuyourcatfish

davefrombc said:


> Politics and religion are ok, as long as discussion/ debate is kept civil . As Neven said . . if you don't like the subject, ignore it, and go on to what you are interested in .


I never said didn't like the subject, I'm just surprised its allowed.


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## cpool

Well I am not close minded to evolution, however from all of the study that I have done and all of the things I have looked into, I find it takes the least amount of Faith to believe in God as the creator of the world. 

I believe Mferko believes that Evolution is the be all and end all of this topic, he has stated that Evolution is fact, like somehow that makes it fact. I think for someone to close their mind to the thought that God created the world is as equally ridiculous to closing your mind to evolution. It is only to someones own detriment not to search things out for themselves, and just believe what someone is telling them. Be that a religious teacher or Dawkins or a science teacher. 

I guess for me what it boils down to is this, it takes faith to believe in God or evolution. Regardless of what you want to call it or not call it, if you believe in the theory of evolution, you then have faith that evolution is correct.


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## Mferko

cpool said:


> Well I am not close minded to evolution, however from all of the study that I have done and all of the things I have looked into, I find it takes the least amount of Faith to believe in God as the creator of the world.
> 
> I believe Mferko believes that Evolution is the be all and end all of this topic, he has stated that Evolution is fact, like somehow that makes it fact. I think for someone to close their mind to the thought that God created the world is as equally ridiculous to closing your mind to evolution. It is only to someones own detriment not to search things out for themselves, and just believe what someone is telling them. Be that a religious teacher or Dawkins or a science teacher.
> 
> I guess for me what it boils down to is this, it takes faith to believe in God or evolution. Regardless of what you want to call it or not call it, if you believe in the theory of evolution, you then have faith that evolution is correct.


clearly you dont even understand what faith means... im saying just because you dont understand something doesnt mean you can point to the skyman and say he did it, we dont get all the answers at once, science takes time. we might not understand exactly how every aspect of evolution works right now but there is no evidence that disproves it.
you need to go look at the definition of faith, it is belief without evidence. we have tonnes of evidence of evolution, its the evidence for creation that your lacking.


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## Mferko

dZilla said:


> cpool said:
> 
> 
> 
> I don't think its about faith... and I don't think people that talk about evolution believe it to be the be all end all of the topic.... There's the possibility that that is the answer..... the idea that this is the right answer and scientist will continue to try to prove or disprove it.
> 
> "Creationism" or non-evolutionary thought is that things are the way they are.... This is how everything started no changing it.... Adam and Eve etc... etc....
> 
> For one to close their mind on the mere possibility of something like evolution is ridiculous.
> 
> Also some people need to seperate in this conversation things about religion outside of the "creationism vs. evolution" talk, it seems like no other organization in the world void of religion ever did anything bad.... (in reference to Spanish Inquisition, Salem witch hunts etc....)... Nazism???? Russian Communism???? --- trust me atheist can be just as bad lol
> 
> And yes Evolution is only a theory.... gravity is a theory as well.... throw yourself off a bridge see how true that theory is....
> 
> Anyways thats my 2 ga-billion cents
> 
> 
> 
> well put
Click to expand...


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## Illbuyourcatfish

Numbers of religious believers in educated high income countries have been steadily dropping at a rate of around 1% a year for the last ten years while not surprisingly the number of non believers have gone up at that same rate. And that isn't a theory.

Just thought that was interesting.


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## Mferko

education for the win!


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## cpool

No evidence of a creation, wouldn't everything be evidence of a creation?


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## TomC

cpool said:


> No evidence of a creation, wouldn't everything be evidence of a creation?


How so? By the term creation, you mean creation by god. The simple existance of something isnt evidence that a god created it.


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## Elle

I think we need an icon for "flammable subject" threads like this that might any moment burst into flames...or a "popcorn eating" icon for those of us wandering in to observe. :lol:


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## dZilla

I think it was already said in some previous pages... one does not need to participate in this thread if they find the subject too sensitive.... wonderful thing about the internet lol...


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## effox

Just poppin in... My opinion is going to be kept to myself.


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## Nanokid

the thinking here is off, i believe. it seems that it have to be a versus match between both theory's, i think both are true; in a sense

im not a religious man, not am i a strict believer in evolution.

my thinking is that "life" is made up of cells. cells can mutate. life is so complex that we cant fully understand it. thus, i believe that evolution can happen, given that certain animals have slight differences that makes them thrive in different environments (i.e Darwin finches) so, i do believe, that given many MANY years, that it is 100% possible for something to evolve.

however; i don't believe that anything can spontaneously happen. thus it had to have started somewhere. but most people seem to think the only possibility is for Earth to have started. why couldn't earth have been "seeded" by other forms of life?

say that our race on earth, is just a Colony? perhaps other forms of live are using us as an experiment?

may seem silly, but this is just another window of possibility i though of.


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## neven

all i know is that my sister was picked from a cabbage patch


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## Momobobo

cpool said:


> So what you are saying is it takes "Faith" to believe in Evolution.


I dont think he ever implied that. While some may same it takes "faith" to believe what scientists say (which is somewhat true, somewhat baloney), but we can watch micro evolution happening daily and have even seen macro evolution in recorded histroy. In the end, the "6000 year old earth" kills any arguement any Christian may have.

It has been experimented with, and it is TOTALLY possible for "life" to spotaneusly exist. The classic analogy is, if you have a 1000 chimpanzees with type writers that were immortal and randomly typed for all eternity. Is it possible for them to write out Hamlet? Heck, if they had eternity, they could write ANYTHING. It has been experimented before by replicating primordial earths condition at the time, and it is possible for the Organic compounds that make up life to appear. Take mind this took billions of years, a span of time most people do not even begin to fanthom.


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## cpool

TomC said:


> How so? By the term creation, you mean creation by god. The simple existance of something isnt evidence that a god created it.


Sure Tom, you wouldn't look at a painting and say it just happened, you would assume that somewhere along the lines it was painted. Well at least I assume it was painted and didn't just happen from nothing.


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## rescuepenguin

There is nothing I enjoy more than a good debate, people have been really civil on this thread which is great. Just remember a few things. Our society (at least for now) guarantees us the freedom to choose a religion that best suits our belief's and needs. It also guarantees us the choice whether or not to choose a religion in the first place, or even start our own.

In the end, the true test is not belief itself, but to recognize that we have different opinions and beliefs and ultimately learn to live with each other. 

Everyone who prays, prays to the same God.

Steve


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## SeaHorse_Fanatic

First of all, I would like to commend all the members from keeping this thread/debate very civil. As with so many taboo or controversial topics, things can get heated & very personal very quickly. While some posts started to swing in that direction, for the most part, posters have been very good about staying on topic and not getting too personal.

As for my own opinion, I am on the side of the "this is NOT an either/or" scenario. I have been a Christian for over 3 decades and believe in God/Christ. I have seen God work in my own life and in the lives of people around me. My faith is not going to be based on or shaken by what I on the internet or published in books. It is my personal belief and I also do not impose my beliefs on others.

I am also a scientist/aquacultural engineer by education/training and have taught Biology to UBC engineering students in the 90s. Just because I'm a Christian does not mean I dismiss science. There are lots of scientists (both famous and anonymous) who are also religious in their personal beliefs.

Just my two cents and let's keep up the good work and keep things civil. Good debate.

Anthony


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## jcgd

My parents are somewhat religious (although less so as they get older) and I've always come to my own conclusions about things. Logic dictates what I believe and don't so I find it hard to believe is something for which there is no concrete evidence. In the case of God, there is simply no evidence to suggest he exists that is tangible. 

On the other hand, there is only evidence to suggest evolution is real, nothing against it. But evolution is nothing compared to the greater picture. When you take into consideration the full size of the universe (which I doubt any human can truly quantify) the chances that life began isn't really all that far out. The likelihood that Earth is the only planet with life is pretty slim. There are just too many other planets with the proper environments to harbor life. I forget the exact details, but they found a bacteria at the bottom of a lake that is unique from the cells all other life on Earth evolved from. If they confirm it there is a possibility of TWO separate and exclusive events of life on Earth beginning. 

I have a friend at work who is a man of the faith and I asked him to explain dinosaurs. He simply said he didn't believe in them. I didn't know it was optional... believe in them or not, they have proof. That dinosaurs lived it fact, not opinion.

I can personally accept evolution and everything within our universe with ease. It's beyond the universe that I cannot fathom. I cant even begin to imagine the bigger picture. To me, the idea of a God is thinking too small. Yes he is ultimate, but that's the easy way out. If we need something to have created us, why doesn't something have to have created it. And if nothing was to have created God, why do we need something to have created everything else we know. If God can just be, why can't we?


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