Debate Classics : Religion
- Thread starter FoxDemonSoavi
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arcthemonkey
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I'm 90% sure that 90% of agnostics have no idea what it really implies.
There's a difference between being "undecided" and agnostic. To be agnostic, one must believe that the truth cannot be known.
Just throwing that out there for DESIRE.
And it's pronounced "A-NOSTICISM"
Nyphx, I gave up on trying to justify my faith with the miracles I've witnessed and experianced long ago. People just don't listen until it happens to them. Actually, they often continue to not listen even after it does. I call it Scully syndrome.
There's a difference between being "undecided" and agnostic. To be agnostic, one must believe that the truth cannot be known.
Just throwing that out there for DESIRE.
And it's pronounced "A-NOSTICISM"
Nyphx, I gave up on trying to justify my faith with the miracles I've witnessed and experianced long ago. People just don't listen until it happens to them. Actually, they often continue to not listen even after it does. I call it Scully syndrome.
DESIRE;220411":2rkn2bey said:
At least try to pretend to be a little respectful of other people's beliefs.
Agnostic simply means that the person believes in evidence for religion and also believes in evidence against religion. They cannot prove, nor disprove. They acknowledge the possibility of the existence of a higher power, but also the possibility of there not being any higher power.
Undecided would simply be someone that says: "I know there is a god, I'm just not sure which one is the real one." They believe completely in religion, but just haven't decided which one they should worship in.
I think that was what Arc was trying to get at.
@Jonathon:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/archaeopteryx/info.html
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&articleID=000A040D-36A2-1434-B6A283414B7F0000
http://hannover.park.org/Canada/Museum/man/evnman3.html
http://www.rationalrevolution.net/images/268_M.jpg[/img]
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Also, Jonathon, a couple of things to keep in mind:
Anyway, the Bible, perhaps the New Testament, would pass as a decent fairy tale, but the Old Testament contains some of the most brutal, horrific and awful works of fiction I've ever read.
I believe Christianity is just a hybrid religion (most likely formed from Egyptian/Pagan religions) formed to 'keep the common people quiet' as Napoleon would put it. Jesus might have existed, but I highly doubt it.
Yes, there are thousands of transitional fossils. You clearly fail to ignore them. By the way, fossilization is extremely rare.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/archaeopteryx/info.html
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&articleID=000A040D-36A2-1434-B6A283414B7F0000
http://hannover.park.org/Canada/Museum/man/evnman3.html
Do you care to explain why not?
What? You're confusing the theories of abiogenesis and evolution. Please, learn the difference before you try to make such claims.
Wait, can you please provide undeniable evidence for every event that ever happened in the Bible? Thanks, it'd be appreciated.
I don't believe you. Can you please provide references for this claim?
Dang. I thought we would have at least something in common with apes.
http://www.rationalrevolution.net/images/268_M.jpg[/img]
What are these insurmountable social and practical inconsistencies?
Where?
This has nothing to do with evolution. This is geology. By the way, there is no evidence for a global flood.
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Also, Jonathon, a couple of things to keep in mind:
Wow. I wish I could believe a supreme being wrote a Bible with over a thousand absurdities and nearly four hundred contradictions. Your extraordinary claim of men writing the Bible inspired by God requires extraordinary evidence. And, an idea does not gain truth as it gains followers.
Anyway, the Bible, perhaps the New Testament, would pass as a decent fairy tale, but the Old Testament contains some of the most brutal, horrific and awful works of fiction I've ever read.
I believe Christianity is just a hybrid religion (most likely formed from Egyptian/Pagan religions) formed to 'keep the common people quiet' as Napoleon would put it. Jesus might have existed, but I highly doubt it.
arcthemonkey
Sponsor
Mujklob;226922 said:
I'm not going to argue with archaeopteryx. Most authorities on bird believe it was a true bird, with fully developed avian features not present in reptiles. It was no more a reptile than a platypus is. Care to explain where feathers come from? Because it seems to me that the evolutionary theory draws a circle around scales and a circle around feathers, then draws a line between the two and says AHA! Sorry, I missed it. Even if we do call this a transitional form, it only creates more questions than answers. Archaeopteryx also supposedly evolved before all the other dinosaurs with more "primitive" feathers. This whole thing isn't far off from Haeckel?s fraudulant recapitulation theory.
As for Roseae:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v2/n2/tiktaalik-fishy-fish
Someone needs to alert the walking catfish.
More about humans later on. This is the best part.
Abiogenesis is hardly unrelated. If you want to make sweeping dismissals of the creationist's beliefs, you can't ignore that fact that if there was no abiogenesis (unless you wish to propose life has always existed), then an intelligent creator is a given, which lends more credibility to creationist's sweeping dismissals of evolutionist's beliefs. You can't just draw the line between the first organism and what came before it and say, "I don't have to account for this, because it's not what I'm talking about."Mujklob;226922 said:
Mujklob;226922 said:
I'd call this a strawman, but there is no strawman. Christians state from the beginning that a large amount of our belief in the bible is based on faith. Evolutionists aren't allowed to claim this, because it's not "scientific" enough. None of this changes the fact that science based on inconsistant findings and arbitrary suppositions is bad science. Christianity based on faith is not bad christianity.
Mujklob;226922 said:
Really cute. No serious anthropologist, not even the most famous ones like Richard Leakey believe that Lucy was an ancestor of humans. Newer research shows that Lucy and her like were almost exactly like a pygmy chimp. Piltdown man was a hoax. Nebraska man was a hoax. Lucy was a knuckle-walking chimp. Man of the others are now believes to have rickits. The Ramapithecines were orangutans. Most modern experts believe all the Australopithecines (if there were even more than one species, something that has met some contention) were simply a different kind of ape (evolutionists can only throw out the idea of biodiversity when it furthers their cause, you see). There is a sweeping concensus among experts that if you saw a shaved, clothed neanderthal man on a train you wouldn't even give him a second look. There's evidence that "neanderthals" and humans interbred. The evidence is so sweeping, in fact, that Neanderthals are not officially known as "Homo Sapiens." I'm not kidding. By the same methods used to spirit human ancestors out of the woodwork, one must conclude that aborigines are, in fact, not humans - but the missing link! Chimps look pretty human, so they must be the missing link, too.
Wolfman? Looks like we evolved from wolves too.
Want references? They aren't hard to find. You know how to use google, don't you?
Did you notice that every single one of those has a response from christians? Did you read all of those, too, or did you just snicker and look at the list? There are very few proposed contradictions in the bible that can't be accounted for logically. Most of the contradictions are the result of the reader not understanding what he's reading, having no grasp of metaphore or hyperbole, or, yes, the text being confusing. There are fewer still in the original Greek, but it's never been above critics to ignore this.Mujklob;226922 said:
Mujklob;226922 said:
I don't believe you. Can you please provide references for this claim?
arcthemonkey":17fm4q8o said:
I was going to ignore your posts like I usually do (they always have too many references to read, and godamn if I'm going to take the effort to engage in rational debate and do things right), but this part just confounds me.
St. Valentine's Day, Christmas, these come off the top of my head as examples of this. The core belief of the Christian religion, the salvation and methodology is as far as I know, super duper real original. But those two are basically just Roman holidays, called something else, celebrated for a different reason. Well so they dropped the gay sex on Christmas, but it's still largely the same concept.
arcthemonkey
Sponsor
I was making fun of him ^_^ Basically, I got tired of typing, so I quoted something he said in response to another question.
arcthemonkey;227607 said:
Doesn't all knowledge create more questions? The more we know, the more contact (surface area) we have with the unknown. And, most of what we think we know now is probably false. Of course, people used to think the Earth was flat, astrology and alchemy were the way to go, etc.
I consider abiogenesis as theory (until I see life come to be with my own eyes, or if there's at least significant evidence for it), and evolution as fact. I'm skeptical towards the theory of how life came to be (I used to think some higher 'power' guided the process'), but I suppose it is complimentary to evolution, but not entirely needed. Also, just because abiogenesis could be false, does not necessarily mean we were designed by God. We could have been created by the Reptilians, if you believe 'The Truth', and there are probably other unexplored theories of how it life came to be.
Oh, that dreadful word. Faith. I've never understood the concept, I see it as pointless. Why spend your life believing something that has little evidence for? Of course, if you do have evidence, and you are willing to change your mind based on new evidence, then it is not faith, and it is reason. Faith seems like a waste to me. I'm sure a considerable number of Christians believe it out of fear. It's been drilled into their heads from their childhood that "You'll go to Hell if you don't x or y."
I find this very sad. Why would an omnipotent deity approve of fear? Why would he want worship? Oh, right, he's Jealous. Because omnipotent beings have emotions. Because omnipotent entities have needs. I find the entire concept of an omnipotent being completely paradoxical. I don't even understand how a thing with omnipotence could exist, which actually makes sense, because our brain wasn't 'made' (evolved) to comprehend such things.
Wait, Google? Huh? :-/
I just snickered and looked at the list. I possess a bias towards things that advocate atheism and evolution, as do most people possess a bias towards their beliefs. This debate isn't going anywhere, as I see by the shear length of the list.
I find it quite hypocritical that Christians go out of their way to disprove evolution, yet most of them wouldn't dream to question their Bible. I'm reluctant to even converse with people who don't acknowledge even the possibility that they're wrong.
So the book contains metaphors and is exaggerated? So why do many people take it literally? It seems that quite a few Christians 'nit-pick', id est, take what they want to believe literally, but as soon as someone else proposes it's illogical, wrong, or whatnot, they say it's supposed to be figurative.
I was waiting to see this. Anyway, it is best to do your own research and come to your own conclusions. Religious debates hardly go anywhere. People's beliefs are rarely swayed by words, which if course, is a good thing.
Question everything.
An omnipotent being is physically impossible by virtue of the General Theory of Relativity, specifically, the relation between mass and energy. If a being were omnipotent, it would have to have infinite energy at itsdisposal. The universe is finite, so the amount of energy in each point in the universe would have to be infinite. Energy sufficiently dense converts into matter. This means that the infinatly dense energy converts to infinitely dense matter. Infinately dense matter is known as a black hole. Therefore, if there existed an omnipotent being, the universe would be one big black hole.
Overnerd;232298":fe97izqa said:
While I understand the point, the idea of an omnipotent being would operate outside the natural, physical world (on another plane or even "outside" existance).
Also, people often forget that evolution within the human species has been shown in the last few hundred years (documented history). Most people ignore these facts, however.
Let's look at the last few hundred years. The average height in the 1300's was 5'0 for a man (shorter for women). The average height today: 6'0. This could be attributed to larger breeding or even better diet, however this growth in average height is even prevailent in malnurished countries.
Early documentation and even early photographs suggest (I use the word 'suggest' because there isn't, to my knowledge, any official scientific study on this) that people had more body hair (on average) in the Middle Ages than in modern times. As we adapt our environment to us (via airconditioning, clothing, etc.), body hair becomes less necessary to maintain body temperature.
Even things like skin color are unnaccounted for. We are all the same species, but exhibit varying skin tone, localized by region (excluding immigration). Europe, a colder climate that typically receives less sunlight, displays lower melanin counts, and therefore, lighter skin. Regions closer to the equator have a bronzier (darker) skin tone, and generally receive more exposure to sunlight (Middle East, Africa, Pacific Islander all have darker skin tones than Europe). This adaptation is even seen at the small scale when a lighter skinned person tans, as the body adapts by temporarily producing more melanin to darken the skin and protect it from harmful sunrays.
arcthemonkey
Sponsor
That is all true, yes, but Creationists do not deny that breeding and, in a sense, natural selection do occur to the extent you mentioned. Obviously, if it's easier to survive with a big nose, more people with big noses would survive and breed more people with big noses. While creationists don't deny this, we do not believe this believes to the development of new genus, body plans, etc (I say genus because I believe this is what is meant when most people say species - I believe, personally, that species is in many case arbitrary nomenclature anyway). So, while there are many different species of deer, and they may change over time, they will always be deer, and always have been.
We don't ignore those facts that you mention at all - we recognize them fully. But we do not take them as evidence that all life on the planet evolved from simple organisms.
We don't ignore those facts that you mention at all - we recognize them fully. But we do not take them as evidence that all life on the planet evolved from simple organisms.
arcthemonkey;232881":40b7qvau said:
You will NEVER see a new genus develop (or even hints about developing) because it takes thousands of years. That is why many people say that there is no current evidence to support evolution.
It is like looking at a photograph from the 1800's and stating that, based on the snapshot, there are no changes happening. Only when put in context of looking at the photo and then looking out the window can we see the vast differences. Without a complete photo log of the journey, all we can see is Point A in the photo and Point X in real life. Points B through Point W are all lost to us (assuming we knew nothing/little about the timespan in between).
All we have are snapshots in time, and the theory of evolution simply tries to fill the gaps between them.
Hmm, just a thought. "Micro-evolution" and "macro-evolution" do not exist. There is only evolution. I think most people would acknowledge that "micro-evolution" happens. What they don't seem to understand is that "macro-evolution" is the long-term build-up of "micro-evolution". They're the same thing. Saying "micro-evolution happens but macro doesn't" doesn't make any sense. It's just evolution.
If you still don't understand this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZwUV-auY4w
If you still don't understand this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZwUV-auY4w
Micro-evolution is, i'm pretty sure, just another way of saying natural selection, the 'evolution' that can be shown to be happening, nothing more nothing less. I doubt you would dissagree with the position of people who say natural selection happens but 'molecules to man' evolution doesn't? i.e. natural selection can be seen to happen, whilst inter-genus change has never been documented, it is still just a guess, if you will, albeit an educated one based on evidence in rock layers.
All 'evidence from the fossil record' aside, a question to you evolutionists: Doesn't the world scream that its designed? Doesn't the blood clotting process tell of an architect? Doesn't the incredibly intricate workings of our body even hint at the possibility that someone pretty darn clever must have had a hand in the programming?
I'm intrested as to how you explain this...
All 'evidence from the fossil record' aside, a question to you evolutionists: Doesn't the world scream that its designed? Doesn't the blood clotting process tell of an architect? Doesn't the incredibly intricate workings of our body even hint at the possibility that someone pretty darn clever must have had a hand in the programming?
I'm intrested as to how you explain this...
Roman Candle
Member
No. Care to explain why it should?
@ Roman Candle: Exactly.
Order does not prove that God exists any more than chaos proves that he does not exist. The universe if flooded with both.
Blood clotting can also be explained as a process developed by the body to prevent death of the organism as a whole. This explaination would fall under "survival of the fittest". The organism that can repair itself survives.
The cardiovascular system was a slowly developed process that grew and evolved with the organism.
Etc., etc., etc.
Things fitting together nicely is as easily an argument for evolution as it is for creationism.
Order does not prove that God exists any more than chaos proves that he does not exist. The universe if flooded with both.
Blood clotting can also be explained as a process developed by the body to prevent death of the organism as a whole. This explaination would fall under "survival of the fittest". The organism that can repair itself survives.
The cardiovascular system was a slowly developed process that grew and evolved with the organism.
Etc., etc., etc.
Things fitting together nicely is as easily an argument for evolution as it is for creationism.
arcthemonkey
Sponsor
arcthemonkey;227607 said:
You could have read back just one page ^_^