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Dudley
07-27-2010, 01:15 PM
Thread created ^^. Let ubers rule the world^^

nathrakh
07-27-2010, 01:21 PM
Why you created this? Evolutionism has already won.

Dudley
07-27-2010, 01:23 PM
One : for the sake of discussion
2) for it not to be made in another thread
3) Because according to my texans friends, it hasn't. Yet.

Silfir
07-27-2010, 02:08 PM
I remember a similar topic on the other, "old" forum over at the Hall of Fame: "Darwinism" (http://adom.brinkster.net/forum/messages.asp?thread=5306&start=49397&page=1&tmp=50401), for the interested reader. You might recognize a number of familiar faces :)

gut
07-27-2010, 03:45 PM
You won't recognize mine, though I was around then.
Even I has sense sometimes.

fazisi
07-27-2010, 07:13 PM
I finally made my first post in the other headbashing thread- I mean argument thre- no wait, discussion thread... I have a pair of rules on how internet debates should be handled.

1. I am always right.

2. Nothing I say will ever change my opponent's beliefs so just have fun.

This usually ends up with me making jabs at flaws in logic or contradicting statements made by the same person. Or as I like to call it, making the other guy look dumb. As long as I have no expectations of the other person realising how right I am, I just revel in the pleasure their infantile attempts to revoke my insults as I dominate them with my internet prowess.

So on that note, the Bible is right. Fairy tales created by the modern zeitgeist regarding the origins of the universe are fanciful explanations attempting to give an answer to what they do not know in a vain attempt to justify their denial of God.

gut
07-28-2010, 01:02 AM
> 1. I am always right.

> 2. Nothing I say will ever change my opponent's beliefs so just have fun.

I'll play by those rules then. BigBang = 'first there was nothing, then it exploded'

Grey
07-28-2010, 01:21 AM
What about before that?

gut
07-28-2010, 01:36 AM
Either more nothing or more explosions I presume :D

Albahan
07-28-2010, 05:39 AM
I don't understand why these have to be opposing. Can't evolution be a result of creationism? As in a deity creates life and designs it to then evolve. I mean if I were a deity I think it would be a lot more fun to see a species I create evolve and adapt over years and years rather than just make a fully evolved life form.

Sidenote: F50's post in the Brinkster forum was unsettling... to accuse Catholics of not being Christian is quite the ridiculous statement... though I certainly appreciated Grey's reply :)

garyd
07-28-2010, 06:38 AM
Until someone invents a time machine neither is provable and maybe not even then. Put it this way any God capable of creating this universe woud have had to exist prior to and further would therfore exist exterior to it. Similarly such a God could have created it at any point in it's history he wished and we who dwell wholly within the universe would have no real way fo knowing anything other than the apparent age of this universe which could be drastically different from the actual age of this universe.

Laukku
07-28-2010, 09:40 PM
Until someone invents a time machine neither is provable and maybe not even then.

I think evolution and Earth's four billion year history have been pretty much proved already. There's SO much evidence that supports them, and none that suggests otherwise AFAIK.

fazisi
07-28-2010, 11:25 PM
I think creationism and Earth's seven thousand year history have been pretty much proved already. No evidence against them AFAIK.

Laukku
07-28-2010, 11:42 PM
Thanks fazisi, I rephrased my post. :P

fazisi
07-29-2010, 02:28 AM
I think this is the part where we square off and start shooting this "proof" at each other while undermining each other's credibility.

grobblewobble
07-29-2010, 09:00 AM
Thread created ^^. Let ubers rule the world^^


Why you created this? Evolutionism has already won.

This thread wasn't created, it evolved.

gut
07-29-2010, 04:02 PM
Either way, I no longer believe in Dudley and openly
mock those who do, especially Dudley.

JellySlayer
07-29-2010, 05:48 PM
Evolution vs creation (evolutionism is not a word AFAIK) is not really a sensible debate, because phrasing it this way is logically fallicious. It is a false dichotomy: evolution and creation are two possible explanations for the diversity of life, but they are not the only ones. Thus, evidence against evolution is not evidence for creation; neither is evidence against creation evidence for evolution. It is entirely possible that evolution could be false, but that there could be another, perfectly reasonable naturalistic explanation that does not invoke special creation. One cannot assume that if one side is wrong, the other is right be default. Both could be wrong.

This is rather a problem for the creationist side of things, since it is extraordinarily difficult to build a positive case for special creation.

gut
07-29-2010, 06:51 PM
> it is extraordinarily difficult to build a positive case for special creation.

To me it seems easy, but only on a general level. Things always seem to
get quite derailed on the details level. I'm a common sense type human,
and the 'order doesn't come from chaos' argument is an excedingly good
one to my mind. To me, it just seems infinitely more likely that order
comes from order.

The theory of 'first there was nothing, then it exploded, the bits bumped
together long enough, so that's how humans came to be' just doesn't
smack of common sense. I think the thing that keeps me from being a
fanatic for either side is my comfort level in just saying 'I don't know.'

JellySlayer
07-29-2010, 09:15 PM
> it is extraordinarily difficult to build a positive case for special creation.

To me it seems easy, but only on a general level. Things always seem to
get quite derailed on the details level. I'm a common sense type human,
and the 'order doesn't come from chaos' argument is an excedingly good
one to my mind. To me, it just seems infinitely more likely that order
comes from order.

Your computer is what you might call a highly ordered state. It is made of many constituent pieces that are each less complicated than the whole, and work in an ensemble to produce a particular result. But your computer came about from disorder: originally, all of the pieces of your computer were trace bits of rock scattered across the globe. Putting them all together required clearly moved them from a less orderly state to a more orderly one. Now, yes, your computer was built by humans--but humans are not God. We are not granted special exemptions from physical laws; we have to obey the same laws as everything else in the universe. If 'order does not come from choas' were a physical law, it would apply to everything we do. We wouldn't be able to build or create anything, because doing that would violate this law.

Fortunately, order can arise from chaos, in fact, it does so all the time. See, snowflakes (crystal growth of all kinds, in fact), cloud formation, reproduction, pretty much everything that humans have ever built, cooling of gases into liquids or solids, cell division, plant growth as a few examples. All you need is free energy, which the Earth has in abundance.

It's worth commenting too, that "order" and "chaos" aren't terms that are terribly well defined in these types of situations anyway. Is one cell more or less orderly than two? Is a tree more orderly than a seed? Is a cloud more orderly than a bucket of water?

Grey
07-29-2010, 09:41 PM
It's also worth noting that what order there is came about over a period of time and across a physical space that is far far beyond our ability to realistically conceive. And on top of that, there's still a lot of chaos about. Evolution goes a long way to explaining why we have so many millions of species of beetles. Creationism rather falls short on that area, unless you believe god has some sort of beetle fetish...

fazisi
07-29-2010, 10:55 PM
Your computer is what you might call a highly ordered state. It is made of many constituent pieces that are each less complicated than the whole, and work in an ensemble to produce a particular result. But your computer came about from disorder: originally, all of the pieces of your computer were trace bits of rock scattered across the globe. Putting them all together required clearly moved them from a less orderly state to a more orderly one. Now, yes, your computer was built by humans--but humans are not God. We are not granted special exemptions from physical laws; we have to obey the same laws as everything else in the universe. If 'order does not come from choas' were a physical law, it would apply to everything we do. We wouldn't be able to build or create anything, because doing that would violate this law.

Humans, while not God, are part of the "intelligent design" idea. I sadly haven't seen a microprocessor created in the wild by continental plates rubbing up against each other then having it struck by lightning to solve pi to the 189332154634523762342 decimal.

Also, if there are physical laws governing what objects may act, doesn't that remove the chaos and create order?


It's also worth noting that what order there is came about over a period of time and across a physical space that is far far beyond our ability to realistically conceive. And on top of that, there's still a lot of chaos about. Evolution goes a long way to explaining why we have so many millions of species of beetles. Creationism rather falls short on that area, unless you believe god has some sort of beetle fetish...

Creationists argue that the presence of God and his capabilities are far far beyond human understanding.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

As to put some confusion aside to my personal beliefs so people can understand where I am coming from, I believe in some form of intelligent design. Nothing doesn't create something which doesn't create complex life in near balance by some miraculous accident. I have an easier time believing that a guy raised a stick and made a fucking sea open up a pathway for thousands of people to walk across.

However, God isn't some old dude in the sky judging my actions. And true acts of God aren't him reaching down from heaven and squishing the ants that didn't follow his rules properly. God is the laws of nature. All his acts on our world and our universe act upon the rules that we must follow. That is why it is hard to recognize miracles for what they are because most are so mundane.

And also, I completely agree with Darwin about survival of the fittest. Within a species and in relation to other species, the fittest will survive. However, just because you are the biggest and baddest monkey with the rockingest genes on the planet and you get all the babes you could ever want doesn't mean that you will ever have an offspring that will turn into a human. Nor if you are the most gimped monkey who has less hair than all your brothers and sisters but a bulging cranium and happen to get with your inbred aunt/cousin/daugther monkey who had been exposed to too many UV rays from suntanning on the savannah will you ever produce a human. Micro evolution I'm with 100%. Macro evolution is retarded.

gut
07-29-2010, 11:02 PM
> your computer came about from disorder

Nope. I wasn't saying order comes only from 100% order, but
rather that it can't come from 100% chaos.

> If 'order does not come from choas' were a physical law,
> it would apply to everything we do. We wouldn't be able to
> build or create anything,

An idea may be considered chaotic, but it can't happen without
a brain (a rather pinacle of order).

> Is a tree more orderly than a seed?

Don't know, but I'm not reaching for a bar that high. I'll
happily settle for a tree being considered more orderly than
an instance of 'nothing' exploding... unless it was a very
orderly explosion of nothing, that is.

> explaining why we have so many millions of species of beetles.

Yeah, lots of birds too. Even our allmighty ~scientists~ couldn't
understand the value of having so many varieties. That is, until
a few types were extincted, then it's a lot easier for them to
see :D

> Creationism rather falls short on that area,

I seem to share the opinion of some others here, that these two
concepts aren't mutually exclusive. Evolution isn't illogical, I'm
only criticizing the stuff I see as illogical or against common sense.

Silfir
07-30-2010, 01:36 AM
Nothing doesn't create something which doesn't create complex life in near balance by some miraculous accident.

Provided I actually understood the sentence...

I've never had a problem with the notion that life being created can be the result of a chain of coincidence and extremely "lucky" circumstances. Billions upon billions of stars in the universe means that conditions for life pretty much had to develop somewhere. It's very likely that someone, somewhere, is going to play the lottery and actually win, too. Coincidences happen. On a planet with 6 sextillion tons of mass (or something) and with a time frame of several billion years to work with, there's plenty of room for a whole lot of coincidences. We have the "luck" of having been placed on a planet capable of sustaining life since if we hadn't, we wouldn't exist to point out our unluckiness.

I'm pretty sure the order we perceive in natural phenomena doesn't hint at a being that placed said order, it hints at the human ability to recognize patterns and commit them to mind. We look for the order in things, therefore we find it. We saw the sun rise in the east, reach its zenit at noon, then saw it set in the west, and concluded it was a strange disc of light that travelled across the sky dome covering the flat earth. Humans are good at finding theories and explanations - they don't have to be correct - it's what helped us survive to this day. For every completely wrong assumption there is another completely correct, or sometimes half-correct one that still ends up beneficial. A people becomes aware that those who eat pig meat end up dying in a pretty nasty manner shortly thereafter - clearly it must be the will of the gods not to eat pork! (2000 years later other explanations are provided, but religious practices are stronger.)

Humanity has thrived for ages working under hilarious webs full of untruths, half-truths and the occasional insight that is actually pretty close to what later generations will keep finding out. And it's always, always because we look for patterns, because we look for the order in things, and try to understand what we see. We wouldn't have done it this way for thousands of years if it wasn't a good way (selection again). Of course, if we always realized that nothing is set in stone and if we were always willing to see that the explanation we devised doesn't hold up to scrutiny, that would help, but stubbornness is another trait that has helped humans thrive in adversarious circumstances over the years.

Having an explanation for everything does not preclude ignorance - if anything, ignorance is much easier to amass and retain that way.

Creationism, in whichever form, is an explanation humans have found for things being as they are. At this, it's good as any other, for as long as you don't adopt it in ignorance of scientific evidence and observations made over thousands upon thousands of years. There will always be something we don't know beyond the things we know, and we will always be able to attribute this part to divine influence. Some do, some don't; as long as we don't choose to remain ignorant to satisfy our desire to find explanations it's perfectly fine.



"Classical" 6000 years creationism always reminds me of the Church of "Last Thursday"ism (which champions the belief that the world was actually created last Thursday, and all evidence pointing to the contrary, including your own memories of the past, has been planted by God in order to confuse you about the truth). Both make equally little sense.

grobblewobble
07-30-2010, 02:48 AM
We have the "luck" of having been placed on a planet capable of sustaining life since if we hadn't, we wouldn't exist to point out our unluckiness.


The anthropic principle. I love that argument.

gut
07-30-2010, 02:52 AM
> with a time frame of several billion years to work with,
> there's plenty of room for a whole lot of coincidences

A few of those coincidences, yeah, but start chaining those
things together and your %'s start going down the drain. It
wouldn't just take a few coincidences to explain order
coming from chaos, it would take absurd chains.

grobblewobble
07-30-2010, 03:11 AM
Evolution is not about coincidence. It is about selection.

I think the main reason evolution is hard to accept for some is that it implies that humans are an animal species.

The interesting thing is that at a certain level, there is no difference between creationism and evolution. When someone creates something, like a computer, you might as well say that the computer evolved from our culture. A computer is the result of a long history of development of ideas that evolved from each other.. Similarly, if you regard the physical world as (part of) god, than there's no longer any difference between "god has created man" or "mankind has evolved".

fazisi
07-30-2010, 03:30 AM
Yeah, that wasn't my most coherent statement. Just as a person who has studied a little about probabilities, the billions of coincidences over the course of billions of years to come to this very point in time takes a lot more faith for me to believe in than some supreme being who had a little too much spare time.

I completely accept humans are animals. We operate just like the rest of our animal brothers. Most people try not think of it because it reminds us we are mortal and will eventually die. The modern western society especially where we try to hide the fact that people die. Hell, everything dies.

At least the ignorant fools who choose to believe in some afterlife get consolation that they will be in a better place... just before they realise everything they believed in life was wrong. Oh wait, they're dead, they don't realise shit.

JellySlayer
07-30-2010, 05:56 AM
Humans, while not God, are part of the "intelligent design" idea. I sadly haven't seen a microprocessor created in the wild by continental plates rubbing up against each other then having it struck by lightning to solve pi to the 189332154634523762342 decimal.

Also, if there are physical laws governing what objects may act, doesn't that remove the chaos and create order?

Give me a coherent definition of what you think chaos and order are, and we'll move on from there.


Creationists argue that the presence of God and his capabilities are far far beyond human understanding.

This isn't an argument for creation.


And also, I completely agree with Darwin about survival of the fittest. Within a species and in relation to other species, the fittest will survive. However, just because you are the biggest and baddest monkey with the rockingest genes on the planet and you get all the babes you could ever want doesn't mean that you will ever have an offspring that will turn into a human. Nor if you are the most gimped monkey who has less hair than all your brothers and sisters but a bulging cranium and happen to get with your inbred aunt/cousin/daugther monkey who had been exposed to too many UV rays from suntanning on the savannah will you ever produce a human. Micro evolution I'm with 100%. Macro evolution is retarded.

There's no such thing as microevolution or macroevolution. These are terms invented by creationists. There is only evolution. Again, the problem here is the timescale. A monkey can't spontaneously turn into a human over a single generation--this would in fact disprove evolution. But we've certainly seen the emergence of new species from existing ones, and we've seen the evolution of beneficial traits over a relatively trivial number of generations of bacteria.


> your computer came about from disorder

Nope. I wasn't saying order comes only from 100% order, but
rather that it can't come from 100% chaos.

What does it mean for an object to have 100% order or 100% chaos? How are you defining these terms?


> If 'order does not come from choas' were a physical law,
> it would apply to everything we do. We wouldn't be able to
> build or create anything,

An idea may be considered chaotic, but it can't happen without
a brain (a rather pinacle of order).

Why is an idea chaotic? Why is a brain orderly? How can a chaotic idea come from an orderly brain?


Don't know, but I'm not reaching for a bar that high. I'll
happily settle for a tree being considered more orderly than
an instance of 'nothing' exploding... unless it was a very
orderly explosion of nothing, that is.

Conveniently enough, the Big Bang has nothing to do with evolutionary theory.

fazisi
07-30-2010, 07:35 AM
Give me a coherent definition of what you think chaos and order are, and we'll move on from there.

Order means predictability. Chaos means inpredictability. If I mix lemon juice and sugar, I get lemonade. This is order. If I mixed lemon juice and sugar but got a sandwich, this would be chaos.

In the same way, if I breed humans and I get a human, this is order. If I breed humans and get a sandwich, this would be chaos.



Creationists argue that the presence of God and his capabilities are far far beyond human understanding.This isn't an argument for creation.So how come it is an argument for evolution? I read the original post as "With our limited understanding, we can't easily comprehend how evolution truly works." Since we can't understand how God works by the exact same reasoning, is it somehow an invalid argument?


There's no such thing as microevolution or macroevolution.
You probably don't know what the difference is. Let me describe it to you.

Microevolution is survival of the fittest within a species. There are numerous traits contained in the genes of the various members of this species. Members with weak traits die or fail to reproduce while members with strong traits survive or reproduce greatly. Therefore, the overall makeup of the species' collective genes will reflect that of the strong members. Outside sources can change what is considered strong and weak (such as climate, predators, food sources, etc.)

Macroevolution is the misconception that a species will change into a different species by gaining new traits (mutations). I will need some references to these apparent new species and proof that they have a higher survival rate than their parent species. Also, there are numerous examples of such complex species specific biological functions that it would take numerous evolutions of useless weak traits to combine to form one strong trait. The fish-to-amphibian is one of my favorite. The powers of evolution mystically endow this fish who yearns to experience the outside world with not only legs on which to walk the earth instead of flop around but also the ability to breath oxygen from the air rather than exclusively oxygen from the water. Oh, but it was just random chance that these two mutations occured at the same time and there were other such similar organisms in which to procreate with to further along this evolution.

Essentially, a couple of runt dogs (weak trait of being smaller and weaker) can survive because they can fit into holes and eat gophers and procreate and create a new "species" of smaller than average dog. But they are still dogs.

I don't see a couple of dogs that prefer tuna fish and birds and making strange mewing noises becoming cats, even over billions of billions of billions of millennia.

Also, I didn't mean that the awesome monkey with his many mates or the boondock monkey with his inbred spouse would have a human as their child but as a some descendant from the traits passed on by that particular mating.


Conveniently enough, the Big Bang has nothing to do with evolutionary theory.
This is why this argument is kind of difficult to debate. Are we talking about the source of life as we know it or how life as we know it has become as it is from any source? As others have stated, many accept both creationism and evolution at the same time. Some creator designed evolution to work as it does. Thread closed.

gut
07-30-2010, 08:10 AM
> What does it mean for an object to have 100% order or 100% chaos? How are
> you defining these terms?

Take the RNG as an example :) To my mind, it is an easy thing to identify as
a product of order. It is complex and accomplishes an obviously intended
function. The function is too specific to believe otherwise. Chaotic story
would be that molecules bumped together long enough and TADAAAA, there's the
RNG. Just an extremely unlikely coincidence that isn't strange for us to
observe, as if we were further from the sun, we wouldn't exist.

> Why is an idea chaotic? Why is a brain orderly? How can a chaotic idea
> come from an orderly brain?

The RNG is capable of generating things that aren't so easily observed as
being orderly. This is a good thing, as that is what it is designed to do :)

>>> Is a tree more orderly than a seed?

>> Don't know, but I'm not reaching for a bar that high. I'll happily settle
>> for a tree being considered more orderly than an instance of 'nothing'
>> exploding... unless it was a very orderly explosion of nothing, that is.

> the Big Bang has nothing to do with evolutionary theory.

Didn't say it did (there anyway, but the case can be made). You asked about
the order of trees vs seeds and I told you I didn't care. That's not what
I'm debating right now. I'm trying to prove that order doesn't come from
chaos, not that order doesn't come from order.

Albahan
07-30-2010, 09:30 AM
I was gonna say something but reading so many random metaphors/analogies to explain things made me forget.

grobblewobble
07-30-2010, 09:41 AM
I agree with Jellyslayer on macro vs micro evolution - that is an artificial distinction. Why would a species not change into a different species after sufficient changes? Please note, it is a hard question to begin with how to decide whether two organisms belong to the same species..



The fish-to-amphibian is one of my favorite. The powers of evolution mystically endow this fish who yearns to experience the outside world with not only legs on which to walk the earth instead of flop around but also the ability to breath oxygen from the air rather than exclusively oxygen from the water. Oh, but it was just random chance that these two mutations occured at the same time and there were other such similar organisms in which to procreate with to further along this evolution.


In this particular example, there do exist intermediate forms, such as the lungfish that has both lungs and gills (and also some very primitive beginnings of legs). This has advantages, such as being able to migrate easily between pools. But if you want to migrate over land, having even such beginnings of legs will help a lot! Once this species had started evolving lungs to better survive dry periods, the ones that were best able to crawl over land had an even better advantage. These traits strongly reinforced each other - it was no coincidence they co-occured! This was a process of repeated selection, not a process of repeated coincidence.

Laukku
07-30-2010, 09:46 AM
"Classical" 6000 years creationism always reminds me of the Church of "Last Thursday"ism (which champions the belief that the world was actually created last Thursday, and all evidence pointing to the contrary, including your own memories of the past, has been planted by God in order to confuse you about the truth). Both make equally little sense.

They are wrong. The world was created last Tuesday.


> with a time frame of several billion years to work with,
> there's plenty of room for a whole lot of coincidences

A few of those coincidences, yeah, but start chaining those
things together and your %'s start going down the drain. It
wouldn't just take a few coincidences to explain order
coming from chaos, it would take absurd chains.

Let's remember that the universe is infinite (or at least VERY large.) So if the chance of humans appearing on one planet over a certain period of time is only one in a billion, the chance of humans NOT appearing on ANY planet is:

one minus (one divided by one billion) to the power of infinite

=(1 - 0,000000001) ^∞
= 0,999999999 ^∞
= 0,999999999 * 0,999999999 *0,999999999 *0,999999999 *0,999999999 *0,999999999 * (and so on....)
= 0,0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000... (and so on...)

That is, there is practically zero chance for humans NOT appearing. This is, of course, assuming the universe is infinite, but any size large enough will do.

Silfir
07-30-2010, 11:00 AM
If it's large enough, it will do by definition :)

vogonpoet
07-30-2010, 12:20 PM
Evolution is not about coincidence. It is about selection.


QFT. I am not eloquent enough to argue Evolution properly. The processes involved are things of great beauty, and my poetry is, as advertised, vogonic. Damnit, I was determined to ignore this thread, but I just can't.

The origins of life and evolution are two completely different topics for discussion. Evolution does not really tell us where life came from in the first place, it tells us what happens to life once it already exists.

The origins of life, with your primordial soup oceans and your chemical melting pots and your strange mixtures of gases in the early days of Earth's atmosphere, these are used to explain the origins of life - here you need coincidence, in order to make some simple amino acids which catalyse reactions which favour the creation of themselves, and a few more coincidences to join some of these amino acids together. The origins of life are pretty much still speculation.

However, once we accept we have something we can recognise as life - the simplest virus, or a single cell organism, then evolution kicks in, and coincidence is no longer required. Evolution is the opposite of coincidence - in fact its full of positive feedback loops. Lifeforms inhabit an environment. Within a particular environment, conditions favour certain shapes/abilities of life form more than others. Those life forms which are most suited to that environment thrive, and the conditions in that environment maybe change slightly, and become even more suitable for the dominant lifeforms.

Meanwhile all these changes are made by the unbelievably accurate copying mechanisms of DNA, which are almost, but not quite, perfect. One imperfect copy of some DNA means that a bird has a slightly longer beak than its great-grandparents had, making it more successful than its peers at extracting sweet sweet pollen from some flower, and so it goes on to become a successful mother. The same gene in some other bird is imperfectly copied a different way, and that birds offspring are less successful.

There is nothing involving coincidence here. fazisi said "over the course of billions of years to come to this very point in time". But thats not how it works. Humans are not the logical end-point of the same process which has been running for billions of years. We are not at the top of the evolutionary tree, and there is no end point, nor is there a direction (or a design) in which evolution moves forward. Evolution is more like the tide of an ocean. Small steps in one direction, maybe some small steps in another direction, back and forth. A loooong series of incremental changes brought about by, and bringing about changes in the environment. The strongest survive. The definition of strongest constantly changes.

Fish didn't randomly decide the oceans were boring and that life on the ground would be more evolved. As someone already mentioned, somewhere on Earth conditions existed that made the life of a fish easier than it was for his other fish friends. This fish, whose parents DNA replication got slightly fucked up, causing it to grow a *very* basic lung as well as the more usual gills, making it capable of surviving long enough after a pool has dried up to flop over to the pool next door. This is abstracted somewhat, but eventually a fish species emerges which can survive on land for significant periods of time. There is lots of land, space, nutrients, and at first, no dangerous predators, so some members of the species start spending more time on land than in the pools, and eventually adapt to the new conditions... etc etc etc.

I am rambling on, and will stop. Evolution is awesome though. Forget the whole annoying atheist thing, ignore the God Delusion if you want, and read The Ancestors Tale and the Selfish Gene by Dawkins. The Selfish Gene is fascinating, but The Ancestors Tale... its beautiful.

JellySlayer
07-30-2010, 04:13 PM
Order means predictability. Chaos means inpredictability. If I mix lemon juice and sugar, I get lemonade. This is order. If I mixed lemon juice and sugar but got a sandwich, this would be chaos.

In the same way, if I breed humans and I get a human, this is order. If I breed humans and get a sandwich, this would be chaos.

Evolution would be very orderly then, I take it? As I said before, if a fish gave birth to a frog, that would falsify evolution. Evolutionary transitions take many generations to happen, and, at least for a time, there may be intercompatability between similar species.


So how come it is an argument for evolution? I read the original post as "With our limited understanding, we can't easily comprehend how evolution truly works." Since we can't understand how God works by the exact same reasoning, is it somehow an invalid argument?

I certainly never said that. I'd argue the opposite in fact: we have an extremely good idea of how evolution works, and have an absolutely massive amount of data to support the theory. No, we don't necessarily know every step in the evolutionary chain, but we know enough that we can interpolate pretty well.


Microevolution is survival of the fittest within a species. There are numerous traits contained in the genes of the various members of this species. Members with weak traits die or fail to reproduce while members with strong traits survive or reproduce greatly. Therefore, the overall makeup of the species' collective genes will reflect that of the strong members. Outside sources can change what is considered strong and weak (such as climate, predators, food sources, etc.)

Macroevolution is the misconception that a species will change into a different species by gaining new traits (mutations).

I will direct you to the talk.origins FAQ on speciation (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html) for observed instances of new species within the last few centuries. I'd also recommend the macroevolution FAQ (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/macroevolution.html) and the evidence for macroevolution (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/) (I note in passing that my claim that the micro/macroevolution distinction was apparently not originally invented by creationists). All of the claims in the FAQ are extremely well sourced from scientific literature and is a great resource on the subject.

[edit]I just want to point out that evolution does not require that a species have an evolutionary advantage over its parent per se. If you have two populations of the same species that are isolated from each other, and different selection pressures are applied to each, you will end up with different species over time. This is particularly common in birds, plants, and some insects.


This is why this argument is kind of difficult to debate. Are we talking about the source of life as we know it or how life as we know it has become as it is from any source? As others have stated, many accept both creationism and evolution at the same time. Some creator designed evolution to work as it does. Thread closed.

Evolution is a theory that deals with the diversity of life only. It makes no claims about the origins of life, or the origins of the universe. There are other theories (eg. abiogenesis, Big Bang theory) that do make these claims, but evolution does not stand or fall based on the claims of these external theories. Evolution simply assumes that life exists, and that the universe exists, and works from there. I understand how, to a creationist, these things are seen as interelated because the creationist's hypothesis does proport to solve all of these problems simultaneously.

fazisi
07-30-2010, 07:33 PM
There is nothing involving coincidence here. fazisi said "over the course of billions of years to come to this very point in time". But thats not how it works. Humans are not the logical end-point of the same process which has been running for billions of years. We are not at the top of the evolutionary tree, and there is no end point, nor is there a direction (or a design) in which evolution moves forward. Evolution is more like the tide of an ocean. Small steps in one direction, maybe some small steps in another direction, back and forth. A loooong series of incremental changes brought about by, and bringing about changes in the environment. The strongest survive. The definition of strongest constantly changes.
Sorry, didn't want to sound like one of those pompous humans who thinks they are the greatest thing since great apes. Hell, we don't even have the word great as a descriptor for our apishness. Just meant "This observable point in time". As awesome as we are at making up fairy tales about our past, we suck balls at predicting the future.

Otherwise, completely agree.


Evolution would be very orderly then, I take it?
Yes.

Also thanks for the links, I will try to read through them all but I glazed through the first one and said to myself, "Oh sweet God, scientists have no morals. They have created new kinds of house flies! Those bastards!"

Silfir
07-30-2010, 08:01 PM
What are you talking about? The best thing science could ever do is create house flies that die instantly if you stare at them. Friggin' flies buzzing up my room. Hooray for science!

vogonpoet knows what's up. That is all. Move along.

minchazo
07-30-2010, 09:03 PM
One of the biggest problems I've always seen in these kinds of debates is that creation usually invokes the Chewbacca defense. Just stating that the earth is only 7,000 years old causes glazed eyes and agreement just to make the mental pain stop.

Personally, I believe that evolution exists. I've read enough scientific literature to know that there are even a couple instances where moths/butterflies have become separate species (though that hadn't been completely confirmed in the paper I was reading). That said, I also believe that Man was created by God, not by evolution.

gut
07-30-2010, 09:23 PM
First of all, I don't like using words like 'creationists' or 'evolutionists', as those
are mostly used for namecalling in side-A vs side-B arguments.

> I understand how, to a creationist, these things are seen as interelated

That smacks a bit of your previous sentence about understanding how
'creationists' invented the words 'macro' and 'micro' evolution out of desperation.
It says a bit more about the understander than the understandee :)

> So if the chance of humans appearing on one planet over a certain period of time is only one in a billion

You got that number how? You prefaced your number by saying you don't know if
it's true. That chance, the 1/1 billion one, is more along the lines of simple
lottery ticket drawing rare. You start with a task you don't even know is
possible, add to it conditions you can't possibly account for (think meteors
hitting planets), then extrapolate mathematical probabilities I certainly don't
agree with.

To say that evolution isn't the same as 'order comes from chaos' is wrong. All
arguments for evolution do pivot upon the ability of order (life) to be first
produced by chaos (ocean debree).

When I look at the complexity of man-made things, I can usually judge how much
intelligent design went into their manufacture. I see a pencil and rank it low,
though I still don't think one could happen by chance. A computer is a step up
in complexity, and thus implies it took a higher intelligence to produce. Indeed,
prolly several thousand higher intelligences than mine all working together. Then
you have the next level. Trees. For all our technology, for all our teamwork and
resources, we will never be able to produce something so eloquent and marvelous
as a tree. Remember my 'solar panel' argument? We may take the existing genetic
material and change it, but that isn't the same as creating.

Alas, somehow, bits of raw material did get together and form a tree. To many
minds it is a simple thing. Bits of raw material bump against one another for
a long enough, and a tree will naturally form of its own accord. Simple because
all of the bits that didn't form into trees would not have been able to compete,
and thus would have died out. That just isn't enough for my mind though.

Grey
07-30-2010, 09:34 PM
> with a time frame of several billion years to work with,
> there's plenty of room for a whole lot of coincidences

A few of those coincidences, yeah, but start chaining those
things together and your %'s start going down the drain. It
wouldn't just take a few coincidences to explain order
coming from chaos, it would take absurd chains.

You need to consider the scale more. Billions of years and billions upon billions of planets (though the last is not proven, it seems very likely). Imagine playing the lottery and winning every week for a year. Unlikely? Sure. Impossible? Nope. Do it for 5 billion years and it could happen. Have lots of people doing it for billions of years across billions upon billions of planets around the universe and one of them will get lucky enough to win 52 times in a row. That person will think they are absolutely blessed, but what they perceive as some sort of miracle is in fact just the result of chance. Order out of chaos.

Also, as has been stated evolution is not chaos, though there are chaotic elements. The survival of the fittest rule means that change is actively encouraged. It's also a misnomer in many ways, since "fittest" only really means "fittest in the current environment". It's a very flawed system overall, much more flawed than any divine act of creationism. I'm pretty sure any particularly intelligent god would not have given us an appendix or a blind spot, or a spine better suited for walking on all fours... There's still chaos in the system :)

Grey
07-30-2010, 09:39 PM
Alas, somehow, bits of raw material did get together and form a tree. To many
minds it is a simple thing. Bits of raw material bump against one another for
a long enough, and a tree will naturally form of its own accord. Simple because
all of the bits that didn't form into trees would not have been able to compete,
and thus would have died out. That just isn't enough for my mind though.

Do the White Cliffs of Dover or the Grand Canyon look like they were designed? How about the moon and the sun and the rings of Saturn and the shapes of galaxies? There is a lot of quite fascinating stuff out there that is far more complex and interesting than mere organic, on hugely bigger scales. And yet we have a very good scientific understanding of how they happened over long periods of time.

JellySlayer
07-30-2010, 10:02 PM
First of all, I don't like using words like 'creationists' or 'evolutionists', as those
are mostly used for namecalling in side-A vs side-B arguments.

Many proponents of creation theory self-identify as creationists. It's not normally considered a pejorative term.


> I understand how, to a creationist, these things are seen as interelated

That smacks a bit of your previous sentence about understanding how
'creationists' invented the words 'macro' and 'micro' evolution out of desperation.
It says a bit more about the understander than the understandee :)

That wasn't meant to be glib. To a creationist, the Big Bang, the origin of life, and the diversity of life all have the same cause--therefore these are related topics. To a scientist, there are largely unrelated phenomena that are described by different theories.

As I mentioned, I was apparently wrong about the micro/macro being coined by creationists.


To say that evolution isn't the same as 'order comes from chaos' is wrong. All
arguments for evolution do pivot upon the ability of order (life) to be first
produced by chaos (ocean debree).

No, evolution doesn't require this. If you want to assume that life was created instanteously by God, that's fine, it doesn't affect evolutionary theory in the slightest. Evolution describes how populations of living things change in time. It doesn't describe how life came about to begin with.

Our understanding of the original origin of life is fairly limited, but is essentially based on ideas in organic chemistry: carbon atoms are generally more stable in complexes than alone, and fairly large complexes can arise rather spontaneously. Certain molecules (like DNA/RNA, as well as other simpler compounds) are self-replicating given enough time, available resources, and energy.


Alas, somehow, bits of raw material did get together and form a tree. To many
minds it is a simple thing. If bits of raw material bump against one another for
a long enough time, a tree will naturally form of its own accord. Simple because
all of the bits that didn't form into trees would not have been able to compete,
and thus would have died out. That just isn't enough for my mind though.

A tree arising spontaneously from nothing would disprove evolution. Evolution proposes that complex organisms arise from small modifications from simpler ones. Take your computer analogy again. The computer wasn't invented wholescale from nothing. It was built up from previous, less sophisticated models in a slow, gradual process. Less popular features were weeded out by market forces--given the choice between a mouse and trackball, people wanted the mouse, so the trackball died out, for example--and more optimal designs were kept. The idea of a modern laptop appearing suddenly on the market 40 years ago is just as ridiculous as a tree spontaneously appearing solely from its raw materials. To get to a tree, you might have say gone through: self-replicating simple organic molecule -> RNA -> DNA -> virus -> bacteria -> algae -> seagrass -> land grass -> shrub -> bush -> tree (note: COMPLETELY MADE UP evolutionary history), with many, many tiny modifications between each step.

vogonpoet
07-30-2010, 10:04 PM
[edit]I just want to point out that evolution does not require that a species have an evolutionary advantage over its parent per se. If you have two populations of the same species that are isolated from each other, and different selection pressures are applied to each, you will end up with different species over time. This is particularly common in birds, plants, and some insects.



A good point I completely failed to address in my glossing over ramble. I I seem to have misplaced the book right now, possibly lent to someone, but Dawkins talks about this in the previously mentioned Ancestors Tale. From memory (doubtless contains many errors, but gist should be ok):

Dawkins uses some Lizards from (I think) California whilst discussing what constitutes a different species - how different do two animals have to be before they are classed as a species. A fairly standard answer is "if you can reproduce with someone, then you are of the same species", but the animal kingdom has enough crazy diversity for their to be grey areas such as "I could reproduce with this other being, but I won't, unless tricked by scientists in the lab".

Then there are these lizard people living in some hills. The hills basically form a crescent shape around a plain, with a small passage between the two ends of the crescent. Like an open, hilly mordor.
Letters represent different coloured lizards on top of hills, and ^ are of course hills in my crap diagram:



...^^^..
..^^c^^..
.b^...^^.
.^^...^^..
..a^..d..
..........


So, basically, the 4 groups of lizards are different colours. Lizards A and B mate with one another, lizards C and D mate with one another, lizards B and D mate, and very occasionally lizards A and C are observed to mate as well. However, lizards A and D can't/don't mate, and are therefore a different species. But where do you draw the different species line?

This is just one example of geographical isolation - there are loads of others, like fish in lake Victoria which live on corals. The corals are like underwater island habitats for the wee fish, and are separated by some distance of water. The fish almost never leave their own coral, even though they could theoretically swim over to a different one, and different very similar species of fish are now found in different locations within a single lake. :cool:


:edit:

Oh, and the trackball didn't die, it evolved, and still survives to this day, with many users insisting that their trackball is the bees knees and dogs bollocks. Takes all sorts :)

grobblewobble
07-30-2010, 11:23 PM
A fairly standard answer is "if you can reproduce with someone, then you are of the same species"

The standard definition is slightly more complicated: if two organisms can have fertile offspring, they are said to belong to the same species. (Otherwise, donkeys and horses would also belong to the same species.)

Besides the problems of the kind explained above, it also doesn't work for asexual life forms. In the end, there just is no clear cut way to tell if organisms do or don't belong to the same species.

gut
07-30-2010, 11:24 PM
> Do the White Cliffs of Dover or the Grand Canyon look like they were designed?

No.

> You need to consider the scale more. Billions of years and billions

Raw materials can bump together for googles of years for all I
care, I'll never believe they will form themselves into a buick.

> Have lots of people doing it for billions of years

Hope there are no diseases or other disasters in those billions of years,
otherwise your math goes out the window.

> one of them will get lucky enough to win 52 times in a row

No, they won't.

> god would not have given us an appendix

Might or might not have. For reasons you do or don't understand. How do
you know what god would or wouldn't have done? Remember, I'm not saying
creationism and evolution are mutually exclusive.

> . To a creationist, the Big Bang, the origin of life, and the diversity
> of life all have the same cause

I disagree. By your definition of creationist, I'm not one. I don't believe
in the big bang at all, let alone that it was created by god. I also don't
disbelieve evolution.

> Evolution describes how populations of living things change in time. It
> doesn't describe how life came about to begin with.

I disagree. I can't remember a single science book that taught evolution,
that didn't simultaneously teach the 'primordial ooze' philosophy. Maybe
they changed things at some point and nobody told me.

>> A tree arising spontaneously from nothing would disprove evolution

That's not what I said, is it? I think what I said was " If bits of raw material bump
against one another for a long enough time, a tree will naturally form"

> Evolution proposes that complex organisms arise from small modifications from simpler ones.

That is an aspect, but not the entirety of evolution. Aside from that, I don't think
we are disagreeing. Yeah, little fish can turn to big fish and vice versa, I'm not
debating that, as the order is already there.

> Certain molecules (like DNA/RNA, as well as other simpler compounds) are self-replicating

The order is already there, so I'm not debating that either. I'm debating that order doesn't
come from chaos.

Silfir
07-30-2010, 11:31 PM
There is no such thing as order or chaos :)

gut
07-30-2010, 11:46 PM
Indeed. Only corruption, and those too weak to seek it.

grobblewobble
07-31-2010, 12:42 AM
But there are many examples of order arising spontaneously from chaos. Take snowflakes, for example. Beautiful symmetric structures forming out of nowhere. Or take any crystal. Or the market, where a stable equilibrium price spontaneously forms, out of control of any individual buyer or seller. The formation of stars and planetary systems out of a huge cloud of dust and debris. The formation of mountains, clouds, rivers..

Self-organisation is everywhere.

I think the apparent contradiction arises because we feel life is a miracle that can't be produced by ordinary matter. If we accept that, how do we differ from a falling stone? If life has formed from non-living matter, you might as well say it IS non-living matter. How can something with a conscious mind evolve from something mindless?

My answer to this dilemma is that life is not as mechanical as non-living matter, but that non-living matter is in fact alive. According to quantum theory, elementary particles behave fundamentally unpredictable. This can be interpreted as them having a free will. Yes, you may call me a nut now. :p

fazisi
07-31-2010, 03:39 AM
The official (by the International Planetary Society) "best guess" age of the universe is 14 billion years old and the Earth is 4.6 billion years old.

Now the average human being has tens of trillions of cells. Most average it between 50-75 trillion cells. Now all of these cells aren't unique, but we would have to assume that each different type has evolved seperately because they share a common ancestor of single-celled organisms. I really should get off of this topic before I get into hot water for being a moron, but I would also like to point out the other sorts of cells in other life forms. I don't know all the kingdoms but I do recall there being things like animals, plants, fungi and bacteria. There's a lot of different types of living cells that have to develop over this period of time.

Now, I admit I suck at biology and because of this, I will use another (oh no!) metaphor. I am halfway decent at math so I might use the simplified example of having 52 consecutive 6/49 winning tickets in a row. Now, as much as I would love to calculate that particular instance, I have only so much patience and free time. Let's just calculate winning it four times in a row.

First off, the 6/49 is a simple game where you pick 6 numbers out of 49. If the lotto machine produces these same numbers, you win loads of cash. This means there are 13983816 different combinations of 6 numbers out of 49. If you purchase only 1 ticket a week, this means your odds are 1:13983816.

Now I want to play two weeks in a row. I purchase one ticket the first week and one ticket the second week. My odds are now 1:195547109921856.

Three weeks in a row, odds are approximately (my calculator isn't really that smart and I am not even going to bother doing this by hand) 1:2734494804479010000000.

Four consecutive jackpot wins odds are 1:38238672198790400000000000000.

So now we try to win four weeks in a row since the birth of the Earth, a short 239200000000 weeks ago. The probability of this is gigantic 0.000000000000000006255%.

Also, I'll admit that this analogy took no consideration of Grey's apparent "billions upon billions of planets", which would be similar to billions of billions of people each trying to win that elusive four-in-a-row 6/49s. However, the trillions upon trillions of difference cell structures which had to develop on Earth alone in the exact same time frame should help to prove my point.


But there are many examples of order arising spontaneously from chaos. Take snowflakes, for example. Beautiful symmetric structures forming out of nowhere. Or take any crystal. Or the market, where a stable equilibrium price spontaneously forms, out of control of any individual buyer or seller. The formation of stars and planetary systems out of a huge cloud of dust and debris. The formation of mountains, clouds, rivers..
Negative. Crystal formations are created in an orderly fashion based on the molecular structure of the crystal's molecules. The market isn't a good analogy for a few reasons, but I will guess most will agree it isn't stable or fair. Formation of stars and planets are also based on laws of chemistry and physics.

JellySlayer
07-31-2010, 04:38 AM
Negative. Crystal formations are created in an orderly fashion based on the molecular structure of the crystal's molecules. The market isn't a good analogy for a few reasons, but I will guess most will agree it isn't stable or fair. Formation of stars and planets are also based on laws of chemistry and physics.

Guess what, molecular biology is based on the laws of chemistry and physics too. So is evolution...

grobblewobble
07-31-2010, 08:46 AM
I really should get off of this topic before I get into hot water for being a moron

I can only speak for myself, but I actually enjoy the chat. If we would all agree there would be nothing to talk about.


Now the average human being has tens of trillions of cells. Most average it between 50-75 trillion cells. Now all of these cells aren't unique
The number of distinct cell types is smaller than 1000.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_distinct_cell_types_in_the_adult_human_bod y


I don't know all the kingdoms but I do recall there being things like animals, plants, fungi and bacteria.
All those species evolve simultaneously, not one at a time.



I am halfway decent at math so I might use the simplified example of having 52 consecutive 6/49 winning tickets in a row.
I am not sure why you think evolution requires this kind of luck? As I tried to emphasize before, the driving force is repeated selection, not some absurd chain of coincidence.

fazisi
07-31-2010, 11:22 AM
I don't know all the kingdoms but I do recall there being things like animals, plants, fungi and bacteria.All those species evolve simultaneously, not one at a time.
I would hope so given that we have to eat these other things to survive.


I am not sure why you think evolution requires this kind of luck? As I tried to emphasize before, the driving force is repeated selection, not some absurd chain of coincidence.
I don't think you understand how combinations work. It is a selection.

To put it simply, we have 49 numbered balls. We select a ball one at a time. Once a ball is selected, it is removed from the set so there will be no repetition. We do this six times. Therefore, we select 1 of 49, the 1 of 48, then 1 of 47, then 1 of 46, then 1 of 45, then 1 of 44. Thankfully, some people smarter than me came up with a mathematical formula to more easily derive the answer.

( n! ) / ( r! (n-r)! )
n is total number of objects, or the set (49 numbered balls)
r is number of selected objects
! is factorial

so

49! / (6! (49-6)!)
= (49*(49-1)*(49-2)*(49-3)*(49-4)*(49-5)) / (6*5*4*3*2*1)
= 13983816

Now, I'm not going to be pushing some kind of "billions of lotto tickets" kind of craziness on you since it's obvious your great intellect can see through my ruse of falliable logic. It's just absurd. You know, it is much more likely that I will be able to select the correct number of chromosomes in a DNA strand between each gestation period of the parent species of each new mutation to create a new dominant species than win the fucking lottery a few weeks in a row...

grobblewobble
07-31-2010, 12:45 PM
If I understand you correctly, you say that if you pick a set of chromosomes at random, it is extremely unlikely you will pick exactly the right one. Is that what you mean? Or maybe I misunderstand you now?

If this is what you mean, then of course you are right that the chance of picking exactly one specific combination of chromosomes is extremely small, much smaller than the chance of winning a lottery. But evolution does not require that one very specific combination of chromosomes is put together in any generation.

Soirana
07-31-2010, 03:59 PM
It is too hot for me to do maths, so just for kicks...

what do you think of current epigenetics theories? Does that means Lamarck and Lysenka were not so much wrong?


You also probably know what at least half human embryos get discardd by nature before implantation faze? due to bad combination naturally, so i guess we are all lucky bastards with at least bearable genetic material...

Soirana
07-31-2010, 04:19 PM
Now the average human being has tens of trillions of cells. Most average it between 50-75 trillion cells. Now all of these cells aren't unique, but we would have to assume that each different type has evolved seperately because they share a common ancestor of single-celled organisms. I really should get off of this topic before I get into hot water for being a moron, but I would also like to point out the other sorts of cells in other life forms. I don't know all the kingdoms but I do recall there being things like animals, plants, fungi and bacteria. There's a lot of different types of living cells that have to develop over this period of time.



all human cells originate from one:) One ovum and one spermatozoid:)...

How these specialise is still quite a mystery, but good part of these is unspecialised or semi unspecialized forms, like fibroblasts and so on...

As i was taught actual evolution [according to last theories] was not staright line process. Some cellular organoids like mitochondries and chloroplasts have their own nuclear information, so it is believed that multicelular life started as symbiotic fusion of several "bacteria" one of these becoming heavily specialised in making energy substracts and other providing food for first one...

As time argument goes i could probably search out something about potential speed of mutanttion in bacterias...

JellySlayer
07-31-2010, 05:59 PM
I don't think you understand how combinations work. It is a selection.

I think you're misunderstanding what is meant by selection here. Let's look at a simple case: artificial selection. You're a farmer and you've got a bunch of cows that you like to sell for meat. You're paid by the pound, so naturally you want the biggest, fattest cows you can get. Consequently, when you let your cows mature, you choose only the biggest, fattest, of your males to breed with your females, and you don't breed with the smallest females at all. If you keep doing this for a couple generations, you will find that your cows are bigger than what they used to be, because you are selecting for size.

Natural selection is sort of the same idea, except that the ability to reproduce is the trait being selected. Species that die out in larger quantities before they reproduce, will be selected against compared to those that are more effective at reaching reproductive age. Depending on the species, and the selection pressures (eg. is predation the problem? ability to find food?) different types of traits will end up being selected over others. Each change tends to be small, but if one organism gains a mutation that gives it a 0.1% advantage in reproduction over its neighbours, then within a relatively short timescale, that 0.1% advantage can quickly translate itself into the dominant group.

fazisi
07-31-2010, 07:47 PM
If I understand you correctly, you say that if you pick a set of chromosomes at random, it is extremely unlikely you will pick exactly the right one. Is that what you mean? Or maybe I misunderstand you now?

If this is what you mean, then of course you are right that the chance of picking exactly one specific combination of chromosomes is extremely small, much smaller than the chance of winning a lottery. But evolution does not require that one very specific combination of chromosomes is put together in any generation.
The DNA analogy is a bit off because in sexual reproduction, the two halves are donated by the parents. However, to get a mutation, one or both of these halfs would need to contain a defect to produce a mutation at birth. I don't want to get into the whole Bruce Banner gamma rays shit. However, choosing a beneficial mutation out of numerous unbeneficial mutations in a strand of DNA along with the proper time, setting and all that other shit that will allow this mutation to be beneficial (e.g. I got legs and lungs but there isn't any land in 1000 km) seems like a pretty risky lottery to me.


As time argument goes i could probably search out something about potential speed of mutanttion in bacterias...
Oh, I don't doubt how fast bacteria can mutate. However, the gestation period of bacteria is extremely short compared to other organisms, ranging from less than an hour to a couple of days. Meanwhile, when we are trying to mutate extremely complex organisms, such as a bird, the gestation period (or more accurately since they are egg laying, the incubation period) ranges from 3 to 7 weeks. If we want to start mutating some mammals, we start looking at months between offspring and each new generation has an extremely long time of having to mature to the point at which they can produce offspring themselves.


I think you're misunderstanding what is meant by selection here.
I guess I have start giving direct metaphors with subtext to explain what my metaphor means... Which means my lotto analogy doesn't work very well.

In the case of my lotto, it is done in one sitting in one week. However, with evolution, this selection is done over extremely long periods of time. However, this select of six numbered balls can be compared to the selection of new traits. Every single living member of a species buys a lotto ticket a birth. The current living generation at the time of a significant change each check their numbers. Do their numbers match up for them to win a prize? Yes? They survive. No? They are gruesomely removed from the gene pool.

Now, we do another draw. Then another. Then another. Did at least one member (two if they require mates) have the winning numbers four draws in a row for their genes to continue on or did the species reach extinction?

However, we can always drop entire species and go pick up another one to carry on from. Fuck the dinosaurs, they were destined to die. What we need is some warm-blooded hairy things. We keep moving on and on until we reach the cognitive mind contained in apes. The fact we won enough lottos in a row in such a short sample period is a bit like a fairy tale.

Laukku
07-31-2010, 08:23 PM
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Charles_Darwin.jpg


"BELIEVE IN MY THEORY, OR ELSE..."






Fun fact: On 27 May 1855 Darwin wrote to his friend Joseph Hooker about this portrait: "if I really have as bad an expression, as my photograph gives me, how I can have one single friend is surprising."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Charles_Darwin.jpg

Evil Knievel
08-01-2010, 10:03 PM
Hi, propbably nothing useful I can contribute, but from this kind of thread i just can#t keep away.

So, god is the laws of nature? and god created everything? does it not mean that creation isn#t finished but still going on? evolution is nice description for that.

A god that is nowadays increasingly well understood in his doings, but not at all apart from that.

There was this other guy (P Mainlaender) who talked about order and chaos and made a philosophy about it. He kind of foresaw thermodynamics, and said that the initial state was the state of perfect order (super symmetry i guess it is called today) and there was no time and space, only transcedence - god was a proper god. And what we are witnessing now is the decay of all this perfection into entropy. Finally, all this is going to stop when the chaos is so perfect that it doesn#t change any more. And then god has finished dying.

So the ultimate goal of life and evolution, although it seems to create order, is to catalyze the global disorder to come about even faster (we help god dying), since every bit of order highly structured being like us create destroys a lot more order in the process - to an amount that we start to endanger ourselves already...

and even if it is not the ultimate goal of life, as he states, it is an accurate description of life#s actions and their consequences...

grobblewobble
08-01-2010, 10:24 PM
In the case of my lotto, it is done in one sitting in one week. However, with evolution, this selection is done over extremely long periods of time. However, this select of six numbered balls can be compared to the selection of new traits. Every single living member of a species buys a lotto ticket a birth. The current living generation at the time of a significant change each check their numbers. Do their numbers match up for them to win a prize? Yes? They survive. No? They are gruesomely removed from the gene pool.


Your analogy misses the aspect of gradual changes. Let's stick with the example of fish to amphibian. It is not as if the jump from fish to amphibian has been made in a single generation. This has been a very, very slow progress of intermediate forms that became less and less fish-like and more and more amphibianish.

So to win this lottery, all that is needed is that you are just slightly more amphibian and slightly less fishy than your parents. This has much greater probability than something like drawing 6 correct balls out of 50. It is enough if you just improve on one aspect, too. Having either better lungs or better feet would both be an incremental step forward, you don't need to improve all aspects in each generation.

You emphasize that most mutations are not beneficial. Now this is true, but it does not make evolution impossible. Selection both favours individuals with the least detrimental mutations and individuals with the most beneficial mutations (if any). So in the evolution, simultaneously the damage is repaired and new improvements are implemented. Of course, a too high mutation rate (from high radiation levels) would disrupt the process because the damage could not be repaired quickly enough.

Overheat
08-02-2010, 04:43 AM
If mutations happen over time, then where are the millions of half fish half amphibian fossils? Also, what animals today are evolving currenly?

There are two kinds of evolution. Microevoluion is a fact that there are differences between members of the same species. Macroevolution is a hypothisis that a species can evolve over time into another.

The evidence for macroevolution is weak, but it is accepted because is the a hypothisis that does not involve God. Creationism accepts that there is a god, so it can produce a theory that best fits th evidence.

Both ideas require belief. One can belive that all the matter in the universe suddenly exploded and formed stars. Then gas slowly gathered together and made planets. Then a planet was the perfect distance from a
star. Then, the chemicals available spontaneously formed life, something that humans cannot do even today with the best knowledge and tools. Then these bacteria grew over millions of years and slowly built up all of life as we know it today.

Or, one can believe that God made the universe, ex nihilo, and formed life on earth to live and prosper.

When it comes down to it, this issue is whether God exists. If you are willing to believe whereever the facts lead, then one must believe in creationism. If one refuses to believe in God from the start, then they are forced in thinking that evolution was possible.

gut
08-02-2010, 05:17 AM
> Then, the chemicals available spontaneously formed life,

That's my hangup, and ultimately why I lost interest in this
thread. Some would nitpick the word 'spontaneously', but
that's just nitpicking. How things transitioned from raw
materials into life is the more fundamental question to me,
rather than how life proceded thereafter. Well, that, and
how did the raw materials come to be :D

garyd
08-02-2010, 05:34 AM
Evolution is about looking at the available facts applying various assumptions and from those assumptions providing a theory to date the theory is unproven and in fact cannot be proven. Crationism is looking at the exact same facts applying an entirely different set of assumptions regarding those facts and coming up with a different answer. The facts, in either case have nothing to do with the resultant answers but the assumptions based on those facts determine the answer you give. Which by the way means that tecnically neither side is discussing facts merely there opinion of what those facts mean.

Soirana
08-02-2010, 05:43 AM
If mutations happen over time, then where are the millions of half fish half amphibian fossils? Also, what animals today are evolving currenly?

A) in museums. If you did not bothered going there it is your problem.
Some of these millions still live actually.
B) all of them. Well, humans not so much do to being social, but i could drop some facts in human evolving, particulary in certain human groups gaining resistance to certain diseases due to mutations but i would end rather racistic i guess.

Well, for me it is two questions. Evolution per se is rather clear. Origin of life is another question.

You can believe in spontaneus start of it despite it not being even close to replicable. Or you can believe some sort of it was created and than went on it is own.

Both theories have equal probability straight now in my opinion.

garyd
08-02-2010, 05:49 AM
Sorry no such fossils exist. However there appaer to be a rther large number of creatures that exist to day and existed millions of years ago but do not exist in the fossil record any where in between.

fazisi
08-02-2010, 05:58 AM
Hey, as long as I can deny God, I don't care what the truth is.

garyd
08-02-2010, 06:03 AM
Eactly...You've got two different sets of people hunting the truth or at least a truth that suits them...

fazisi
08-02-2010, 06:28 AM
Also, as for the racist stuff... Being resistant or immune to disease (or certain anti-bodies as some bacteria have developed) is not due to mutation. It is due to the natural growth of certain cells. Because Europeans were exposed to smallpox long before Native Americans, they already developed a resistance to it while it completely ravaged the natives.

I was going to bring it up earlier when someone mentioned the "different colored lizards on different hilltops". Different colored humans on different continents was the first thing that came to mind but no one really wants to start asking if other nationalities are different species without sounding like complete racists.

grobblewobble
08-02-2010, 09:15 AM
If mutations happen over time, then where are the millions of half fish half amphibian fossils?


Some of these intermediate forms are still alive today. See here, for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lungfish

And here is a list of transitional fossils: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_transitional_fossils#Fish_to_Tetrapods

But there are some missing links. That should not be surprising. Only a tiny fraction of animals ever fossilize, and only a tiny fraction of those fossils are recovered.



Also, what animals today are evolving currenly?


All of them. :p For an example of evolution happening at a short timescale, new diseases would be a good example.



There are two kinds of evolution. Microevoluion is a fact that there are differences between members of the same species. Macroevolution is a hypothisis that a species can evolve over time into another.


Then what prevents microevolution from changing so much about a species that it becomes another species?



Both ideas require belief. One can belive that all the matter in the universe suddenly exploded and formed stars. Then gas slowly gathered together and made planets. Then a planet was the perfect distance from a
star. Then, the chemicals available spontaneously formed life, something that humans cannot do even today with the best knowledge and tools. Then these bacteria grew over millions of years and slowly built up all of life as we know it today.

Or, one can believe that God made the universe, ex nihilo, and formed life on earth to live and prosper.


I believe both of these things. The contradiction only arises when you insist that the laws of nature and the will of God are different.

Soirana
08-02-2010, 09:22 AM
Sorry no such fossils exist. However there appaer to be a rther large number of creatures that exist to day and existed millions of years ago but do not exist in the fossil record any where in between.

http://www.devoniantimes.org/who/pages/lungfish.html

i will stop here as i have discussed this topic enough.

Soirana
08-02-2010, 09:27 AM
Also, as for the racist stuff... Being resistant or immune to disease (or certain anti-bodies as some bacteria have developed) is not due to mutation. It is due to the natural growth of certain cells. Because Europeans were exposed to smallpox long before Native Americans, they already developed a resistance to it while it completely ravaged the natives.

I was going to bring it up earlier when someone mentioned the "different colored lizards on different hilltops". Different colored humans on different continents was the first thing that came to mind but no one really wants to start asking if other nationalities are different species without sounding like complete racists.

google malaria vs forms of hemoglobin.

Falciform hemoglobinemia [or whatever english form is] is rather serious disease for homozygotes, but
heterozygotes are rather resistant to malaria. It is mutantion of one gene or one base pair to be exact.


It is similar mutation causing europeans [mostly] being partialy resistant to some HIV forms [which makes them more susceptible to certain viral diseases as certain tropical fevers].

I've been in bio and medical sciences since sixteen you know, so i recommend checking basics before arguing:)

grobblewobble
08-02-2010, 09:41 AM
Hey, as long as I can deny God, I don't care what the truth is.

There is no need to become sarcastic. Christians don't have a monopoly on being interested in the truth.

vogonpoet
08-02-2010, 09:44 AM
http://www.devoniantimes.org/who/pages/lungfish.html

i will stop here as i have discussed this topic enough.

Sorry Soirana, but that link goes to a bunch of money grubbing scientists who tell lies in order to earn a living - the site even admits receiving funding from the so-called Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. Show me a reference to fossils in the bible, and then maybe I will take your 'theory' seriously.

/yes there is a need to become sarcastic :)

grobblewobble
08-02-2010, 12:31 PM
How things transitioned from raw
materials into life is the more fundamental question to me,
rather than how life proceded thereafter.


Simply put, to have life you need to have DNA, RNA, proteins and you need to assemble a cell from it somehow. The catch is that there can be chemical feedback loops that resemble the evolution of life, but with only proteins. This is fascinating stuff, but I don't know enough about it to explain it in more detail. If you are interested, you could start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis


Well, that, and how did the raw materials come to be :D
They fell off a truck.

Soirana
08-02-2010, 02:36 PM
Sorry Soirana, but that link goes to a bunch of money grubbing scientists who tell lies in order to earn a living - the site even admits receiving funding from the so-called Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. Show me a reference to fossils in the bible, and then maybe I will take your 'theory' seriously.

/yes there is a need to become sarcastic :)

i thought you got used to my sense of humour already:)

JellySlayer
08-02-2010, 03:52 PM
If mutations happen over time, then where are the millions of half fish half amphibian fossils? Also, what animals today are evolving currenly?

There are two kinds of evolution. Microevoluion is a fact that there are differences between members of the same species. Macroevolution is a hypothisis that a species can evolve over time into another.

I will direct you to the talk.origins FAQ on speciation (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html) for observed instances of new species within the last few centuries. I'd also recommend the macroevolution FAQ (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/macroevolution.html) and the evidence for macroevolution (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/). All of the claims in the FAQ are extremely well sourced from scientific literature and is a great resource on the subject.


The evidence for macroevolution is weak, but it is accepted because is the a hypothisis that does not involve God. Creationism accepts that there is a god, so it can produce a theory that best fits th evidence.

Evolution is the accepted theory because it is the one that best fits the available data. Most other scientific theories, such as the theory of gravity or quantum theory, also don't involve the existence of God. Although it isn't terribly relevant in modern times, I will point out that Darwin was in fact an ordained minister and a devout Christian. He agonized for years before publishing his work precisely because of the possible religious implications.


Both ideas require belief. One can belive that all the matter in the universe suddenly exploded and formed stars.

Evolution doesn't require you to believe this, it only talks about the diversity of life. In fact, theories of star formation (sometimes called stellar evolution although unrelated to Darwinian evolution) predict that the formation of stars takes billions of years.


Then gas slowly gathered together and made planets. Then a planet was the perfect distance from a star. Then, the chemicals available spontaneously formed life, something that humans cannot do even today with the best knowledge and tools.

Evolution doesn't require you to believe this, it only talks about the diversity of life.


Then these bacteria grew over millions of years and slowly built up all of life as we know it today.

This is what evolution predicts, although millions should probably be billions, here.


Or, one can believe that God made the universe, ex nihilo, and formed life on earth to live and prosper.

Based on what evidence? Evidence against evolution is not evidence for God or any sort of special creation.


When it comes down to it, this issue is whether God exists. If you are willing to believe whereever the facts lead, then one must believe in creationism. If one refuses to believe in God from the start, then they are forced in thinking that evolution was possible.

There is far more evidence for evolution than there is evidence for God.

If I were feeling particularly belligerent, I might suggest that there is no evidence for the existence of God.

Overheat
08-02-2010, 03:54 PM
Species cannot evolve into another species. One of the many things that would need to happen is for two of the species to mutate to have a different number of chromosomes- at the same time. Otherwise, they could not breed and start this "new" species.

The will of God and the laws of nature are different. God established how His world would work, but He does
not just leave the earth to its own devices. The world would be an awful place if He did. The reason for the Flood was that man was so evil that He was sorry that He had made
them.

A point that many evolutionists will not answer is where did matter first come from? If that big bang happened, there where did all that matter in the tiny point come from originally?

JellySlayer
08-02-2010, 06:40 PM
Species cannot evolve into another species. One of the many things that would need to happen is for two of the species to mutate to have a different number of chromosomes- at the same time. Otherwise, they could not breed and start this "new" species.

It's not as big of problem as you might expect. There's a nice description of how this can happen here (http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/04/basics_how_can_chromosome_numb.php).


The will of God and the laws of nature are different. God established how His world would work, but He does
not just leave the earth to its own devices. The world would be an awful place if He did. The reason for the Flood was that man was so evil that He was sorry that He had made
them.

For God so loved the world that He decided to destroy everyone for sins they didn't even know they were committing. Nice guy.


A point that many evolutionists will not answer is where did matter first come from? If that big bang happened, there where did all that matter in the tiny point come from originally?

Cosmologists have actually thought quite a bit about this. Stephen Hawking has a book out called "A Brief History of Time" that discusses this a little bit. Stephen Weinberg's "The First Three Minutes" looks at this in some detail as well. Short answer is that matter probably came from energy. We know from relativity that we can convert energy to matter by E=mc^2. From thermodynamics, we also know that energy cannot be created or destroyed, so we expect that however much energy there is in the universe now, there must have been the same amount at the Big Bang. There are a variety of ideas for where the energy might have come from, although we haven't yet found any means to observe the Big Bang (and there is good reason to believe it may be impossible to do so), so it's hard to say anything definitive about it.

[edit]I feel I must add that, while postulating the existence of a god who created the energy required to start the Big Bang, it isn't terribly fruitful to do so, since it simply begs the question of how this god came into existence. If you're going to argue that this god always existed or is somehow outside of time, it's just as plausible to argue that the energy of the universe always existed or that the Big Bang happened somehow outside of time.

[edit2]I'll also point out, as I have before, that the theory of evolution does not say anything about the existence of matter, only about the diversity of species.

gut
08-02-2010, 07:14 PM
> so it's hard to say anything definitive about it.

yeah, even that it happened.

> that link goes to a bunch of money grubbing scientists who tell lies in order to earn a living

I suppose you think there aren't scientific organizations that tell the opposite?
They recieve monies mainly from religous organizations, but that is of course
irrelevant to their findings.

grobblewobble
08-02-2010, 07:29 PM
From thermodynamics, we also know that energy cannot be created or destroyed, so we expect that however much energy there is in the universe now, there must have been the same amount at the Big Bang.

Off-topic, but I thought energy was created during the inflationary epoch? I guess I misunderstood?

JellySlayer
08-02-2010, 07:30 PM
> so it's hard to say anything definitive about it.

yeah, even that it happened.



If you've got time for a long, dense, read, Here (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/astronomy/bigbang.html) is fairly detailed discussion of what we know about the origins of the universe.

Overheat
08-02-2010, 10:43 PM
Man knew that they were committing sin. Their actions were "only evil all the time." Man was created with the ability to not sin, but since they ate of the forbidden fruit, man fell; and God punished they appropiately.

The fact that God is perfectly just does not do anything to show that He did not create the world.

No one has answered my question- where did the matter for the big bang to happen come from? Matter does not just appear, only God can create out of nothing.

grobblewobble
08-02-2010, 10:50 PM
I can't resist..

Where did the water come from to create a sea level sufficiently high to submerge all land? Where did it go after the flood was over?

More to the point, if God is perfect, how could he accidentily create a mankind that didn't behave as He intended?

Silfir
08-02-2010, 11:03 PM
I've tried to say it before, I'll just go ahead and give it another shot: There will always be things we don't know, don't know yet, and might never find out. That does not prove the existence of a god. Likewise, nothing will ever be able to disprove the existence of a god. Science and religion are separate things. Keep them separate, will you?

fazisi
08-03-2010, 02:30 AM
I agree, Silfir.

garyd
08-03-2010, 03:09 AM
Sorry, spent most of my life studying paleontology. frankly what are frequently called transitional fossils may well be nothing of the sort. It is an assumption based upon the quite possibly spurious notion that because they bare similar characteristics they must therefore be related and this one eventually became that one.

Often times however the time frame all but precludes the possibility. For instance supposedly we went from a ten foot beastie to a creasture the size of a sperm whale in something less than 15 million years. Sorry but that just doesn't seem to me very likely.

Most of the arguments claiming to prove common ancestry also would work even better to prove a common creator.

JellySlayer
08-03-2010, 05:41 AM
Man knew that they were committing sin. Their actions were "only evil all the time." Man was created with the ability to not sin, but since they ate of the forbidden fruit, man fell; and God punished they appropiately.

I guess God should have thought of that before we made the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the first place, eh?


The fact that God is perfectly just does not do anything to show that He did not create the world.

Making people accountable for the sins of their ancestors is unjust. Torturing people eternally for minor, finite infractions is not just. Punishing an innocent person instead of the guilty is not just.


No one has answered my question- where did the matter for the big bang to happen come from? Matter does not just appear, only God can create out of nothing.

You must have missed it.



Cosmologists have actually thought quite a bit about this. Stephen Hawking has a book out called "A Brief History of Time" that discusses this a little bit. Stephen Weinberg's "The First Three Minutes" looks at this in some detail as well. Short answer is that matter probably came from energy. We know from relativity that we can convert energy to matter by E=mc^2. From thermodynamics, we also know that energy cannot be created or destroyed, so we expect that however much energy there is in the universe now, there must have been the same amount at the Big Bang. There are a variety of ideas for where the energy might have come from, although we haven't yet found any means to observe the Big Bang (and there is good reason to believe it may be impossible to do so), so it's hard to say anything definitive about it.

[edit]I feel I must add that, while postulating the existence of a god who created the energy required to start the Big Bang, it isn't terribly fruitful to do so, since it simply begs the question of how this god came into existence. If you're going to argue that this god always existed or is somehow outside of time, it's just as plausible to argue that the energy of the universe always existed or that the Big Bang happened somehow outside of time.

[edit2]I'll also point out, as I have before, that the theory of evolution does not say anything about the existence of matter, only about the diversity of species.[

fazisi
08-03-2010, 06:47 AM
I guess God should have thought of that before we made the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the first place, eh?
I would rather have free choice than have all my decisions predetermined by some sort of behavioral laws.


Making people accountable for the sins of their ancestors is unjust. Torturing people eternally for minor, finite infractions is not just. Punishing an innocent person instead of the guilty is not just.
Giving everyone an easily accessible "get out of jail free" card and free choice to choose to accept this card seems pretty merciful to me.

JellySlayer
08-03-2010, 07:58 AM
Giving everyone an easily accessible "get out of jail free" card and free choice to choose to accept this card seems pretty merciful to me.

It would seem a little more merciful if God hadn't designed the system in such a way so that we're all doomed to failure. That He made us imperfect but demanded perfection would seem neither merciful, nor just. That He chooses to save some people from the horrible system of justice that He designed is a rather dubious attempt at mercy--surely the merciful option would be to forgive everyone, unconditionally, given that He's decided to condemn everyone, unconditionally.

If God cares at all about free will (the Bible doesn't seem to suggest that He does, but a lot of Christians believe it), surely He would realise that a choice between eternal life and endless torture isn't a free choice at all. It's a choice only in the same sense that a mugger saying "Your money or your life" is a choice.

I think this is what finally lead me away from Christianity. I was able to, at least nominally, accept that God would create the universe in such a way that there'd be no trace of His existence. I was willing to accept that God could tolerate profound suffering worldwide despite His ability to alleviate it. I was prepared to overlook the numerous flaws, inconsistencies, contradictions, and plagarism in the Bible. What ultimately broke my faith was the conclusion that the actions of God, from cover to cover, are not consistent with a benevolent being, but rather, are more consistent with a being that is petty, spiteful, immoral, and unjust. And I'd rather believe in no God at all than a God who is evil.

grobblewobble
08-03-2010, 08:29 AM
Science and religion are separate things. Keep them separate, will you?
I agree, so this is going to be off-topic, but..



If God cares at all about free will (the Bible doesn't seem to suggest that He does, but a lot of Christians believe it), surely He would realise that a choice between eternal life and endless torture isn't a free choice at all.

QFT. Similar dilemma: what does God do if you sin while you're in heaven? If that is impossible, it means you do not have a free will in heaven..

Mind you, I do still believe in a God, just not in the kind of God that judges our actions.

Overheat
08-03-2010, 08:38 AM
@JellySlayer

Not true, JellySlayer. God created man perfect, it was Adam and Eve's choice to turn their back on God and eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

After that, man fell into sin. Because of that, man is born in sin. But one cannot say, "I am getting punished for things I did not do." The fact is that you, me and everyone in the world have been sinning since the day we were born. Even one sin is an affront to the justice of God, so he who has sinned once (everybody) deserves eternal agony and torment in hell.

In essence, man failed and we all deserve to be cast in the fiery pit. That is it- end of story. But, God in his mercy and grace had His Son crucified so that those who believe in Him are saved from what they deserve.

God gives man what he deserves-damnation in hell. God also gives those who believe in His Son eternal life-something that they in no way deserve. In what way is this evil or unjust?

And, where did all that energy come from? A divine being. Where did the divine being come from? It has existed from infinity past. How can that be proved? It can't it comes down to faith. Why should I believe it then? Because believing in evolution required orders of magnitude more faith.

@Silfir
The nature of the subject makes science and religion inextricably linked. Also, if there is stuff that we will never know, then what is the point of this thread? Or a study of the origins of the world at all?

@grobblewobble
The waters of the flood evaporated. In rained for forty days and nights, but they remained in the ark for about a year after the rain stopped.

Silfir
08-03-2010, 09:52 AM
The nature of the subject makes science and religion inextricably linked.

No.

If you mean to say that the subject matter will inevitably raise issues of both science and religion, then yes. That makes it ever more important to keep the scientific side and the religious side apart.

Science deals with the known, or the unknown but potentially knowable. Religion deals with the unknown and unknowable. It's not always clear if something is unknowable; it's best to agree to disagree in this area.

It's perfectly valid to use religious belief and faith to come to grips with the unknowable. It can definitely help.

The trouble starts once religious people try to explain things that can be explained with scientific means - that are evidently not unknowable - with their religion instead, and start deliberately ignoring scientific knowledge to suit their religious explanations. That is what is generally called ignorance, and ignorance is probably the single greatest threat humanity poses to itself.


Also, if there is stuff that we will never know, then what is the point of this thread? Or a study of the origins of the world at all?

That we can never know everything doesn't mean that we shouldn't strive to learn. If we had at any point been content with what little we know and stopped striving to learn, we'd never have progressed even to the stage of simple tools. Luckily for us, humans are not wired that way.



I believe the problem is that you think religion can answer questions of science. It can't. Belief in God and his deeds doesn't substitute for empirical knowledge. Neither, incidentally, can science or knowledge answer questions of religion - of purpose, of what lies beyond this plane, of the existence of a higher power. God cannot be proven or disproven - he is not open to scientific examination.

Either way, Overheat: the Bible was written by humans, for humans, and the stories of creation in it were never meant to be taken as historical account. If the last sentence rings wrong with you, there is no point to having a discussion on the scientific side.

gut
08-03-2010, 09:58 AM
> he who has sinned once (everybody) deserves eternal agony and torment in hell.

You're from kentucky, aren't you? We prolly live really close to each other :)

> What ultimately broke my faith was the conclusion that the actions of God, from cover to cover

From what book is that now? I think the bible is rather a compilation,
rather than a unified work. Tone and content differs greatly amongst
the included 'books'. I haven't read much of it, but I remember the
parts in red being quite different from many of the parts in black.

I believe the counter arguments to the 'why does god do this?' question
is either 'we aren't capable of understanding' or 'god cares more for
souls than bodies'. I won't make either though.

Silfir
08-03-2010, 10:07 AM
@ JellySlayer: I'm a pretty wishy-washy agnostic catholic christian and I am not a big bible scholar. I don't think the bible as a whole does promote the image of a petty, immoral God, however. Oh, sure, there are lots of stories in it that do, but the bible is full of contradictions - after all, it is a collection of books by many authors, hundreds of years apart at times; authors with very different ideas of what God is like and how humans should act. I tend to concentrate on the parables that do seem strike true with me - the Good Samaritan, for instance, which tells me - could be just me, of course - that it's not important whether you nominally believe in God or praise him or the like, if you act according to virtues such as compassion, love of your fellow man, forgiveness and so on. If we go by that - and I do believe I go by that - it's pretty clear that a moral atheist who has never seen a church from the inside, but will go out of their way to help people in need, will fare better in the afterlife than your stereotypical "GOD HATES FAGS"-sign-person who visits church everyday. Though I also prefer the view that whatever good you did do in your life will be counted, even if it can't outweigh the bad.

vogonpoet
08-03-2010, 10:54 AM
[post removed due to pointlessness of so-called discussion]

/screw it. This thread sucks. We should get back to the fascinating world of semi colon abuse.

grobblewobble
08-03-2010, 10:59 AM
This thread sucks. We should get back to the fascinating world of semi colon abuse.

Why? No one is convincing anyone, but we at least we can have some fun chatting, or maybe we'll manage to annoy each other. ;) I think it's pretty cool that threads like this don't get deleted like on most boards "to prevent flame wars".

gut
08-03-2010, 11:23 AM
> [post removed due to pointlessness of so-called discussion]

> /screw it. This thread sucks. We should get back to the fascinating world of semi colon abuse.

DeLiGhTfuL cONtRibUtIoN

vogonpoet
08-03-2010, 12:45 PM
Yeah well, flame war or pointless repetition on both sides, I just think we might be better off debating TH.

I will leave this thread now, and try not to come back. No promises though.

Theym
08-03-2010, 07:13 PM
Pearsonaly, i believe that The Bible(meaning 'the book') is just that, a book full of stories with morals, the only difference between it and any other piece of folklore was that it was written down, and people take it seriously when all it does is lay out the same morals that are repeated the whole world over

JellySlayer
08-03-2010, 07:28 PM
After that, man fell into sin. Because of that, man is born in sin. But one cannot say, "I am getting punished for things I did not do." The fact is that you, me and everyone in the world have been sinning since the day we were born. Even one sin is an affront to the justice of God, so he who has sinned once (everybody) deserves eternal agony and torment in hell.

And that doesn't strike you as profoundly unjust? I didn't eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. My great-great-great-great-great-greater grandfather was, by biblical accounts, hundreds of generations after the story of Adam and Eve supposedly happened. It is therefore an affront to justice to say that I should be held responsible for something that Adam did, any more than I should be held responsible in human justice for something that my father did.

What is the purpose of giving humans this purported "free will", if one misstep by any individual, sentences the entire race to eternal damnation? It's hard for me to fathom any reason for God to do so unless He wanted all of humanity to go to hell. Because that is the invariable end result of such a system. If He just wanted us to love and praise and adore Him forever, He damn well should have just made us that way, instead of making us fallable and then punishing for all eternity because of the very ability to fail that He programmed into us. I'm not arguing what the Bible says. I've read it. I'm just arguing that it's morally wrong.


God gives man what he deserves-damnation in hell. God also gives those who believe in His Son eternal life-something that they in no way deserve. In what way is this evil or unjust?

The case of Christ is a great illustration of God's immorality: Christ was not responsible for man's sin. Punishing him on behalf of someone else is therefore immoral. It is immoral both for God to do it, and it is also immoral for me to accept it. If I committed a crime, then I ought to be held responsible for my actions. That is the essence of justice. Punishing the innocent for the crimes of the guilty is an abhorrent idea--it's like the cultures that punish a woman for being raped; it's not her fault, it's the rapist's fault! As a moral person, I am obliged to reject such a sacrifice on my behalf. More to the point, had I been around at the time, I would have been obliged to stop Christ from being crucified in the first place since human sacrifice is itself a rather abhorrent practice--even the Bible makes this claim, then perplexingly rejects it in this one particular instance.


And, where did all that energy come from? A divine being. Where did the divine being come from? It has existed from infinity past. How can that be proved? It can't it comes down to faith. Why should I believe it then? Because believing in evolution required orders of magnitude more faith.

How is it any more sensible to say that the energy came from a divine being than it is to simply say that the energy itself has always existed? Or, as some scientists suggest, it's possible the total energy may be zero, in which case, there's no need for anything to exist before the Big Bang.


From what book is that now? I think the bible is rather a compilation,
rather than a unified work. Tone and content differs greatly amongst
the included 'books'. I haven't read much of it, but I remember the
parts in red being quite different from many of the parts in black.

The New Testament includes the sections on human sacrifice (of Christ), hereditary sin, and eternal judgment, all of which I consider to be pretty malevolent ideas. From the Old Testament, we can add such behaviours as genocide, infanticide, slavery and rape to things that receive God's approval.

@Silfir

I pretty much agree with everything you wrote there. I'm just not sure that position is terribly consistent with what Christians typically believe.

fazisi
08-03-2010, 08:13 PM
Why? No one is convincing anyone, but we at least we can have some fun chatting, or maybe we'll manage to annoy each other. ;) I think it's pretty cool that threads like this don't get deleted like on most boards "to prevent flame wars".
False. While not convinced, I have become more interested in gaining more knowledge about macroevolution to see for myself if it is truly a plausible scenario. Thanks again to Jellyslayer for the links.


Pearsonaly, i believe that The Bible(meaning 'the book') is just that, a book full of stories with morals, the only difference between it and any other piece of folklore was that it was written down, and people take it seriously when all it does is lay out the same morals that are repeated the whole world over
The problem is the Bible also does contain history. Since it contains both fact and fiction, it has become very difficult for some people to differentiate between the two. This has lead to some people saying it is all made up while others claim every single story told within must be completely true.

Since I can't tell you exactly which stories are true and which aren't, I just try to learn the moral from each of them then try to apply the moral to my own life.


I'm pretty much in a similar boat as Silfir. But he's a dick.

minchazo
08-03-2010, 08:36 PM
What is the purpose of giving humans this purported "free will"...

You're missing one point on free will: it swings both ways. If He can't punish you for doing evil, how could He reward you for doing good?


The case of Christ is a great illustration of God's immorality: Christ was not responsible for man's sin. Punishing him on behalf of someone else is therefore immoral.

Yup. But offering to take someone else's punishment has always been valid. Christ chose to suffer for us; he wasn't forced into it.



How is it any more sensible to say that the energy came from a divine being than it is to simply say that the energy itself has always existed? Or, as some scientists suggest, it's possible the total energy may be zero, in which case, there's no need for anything to exist before the Big Bang.

Excellent point. I approve!



The New Testament includes the sections on human sacrifice (of Christ), hereditary sin, and eternal judgment, all of which I consider to be pretty malevolent ideas. From the Old Testament, we can add such behaviours as genocide, infanticide, slavery and rape to things that receive God's approval.

Two points: Eternal judgement isn't putting your life on a large scale to see if the good outweighs the bad; it's more of a "Where are you trying to go? Let Me get you there quicker." Hereditary sin would also have its opposite and be positive.



@Silfir
I pretty much agree with everything you wrote there. I'm just not sure that position is terribly consistent with what Christians typically believe.
Then again, my opinions are probably atypical, too.

grobblewobble
08-03-2010, 08:52 PM
False. While not convinced, I have become more interested in gaining more knowledge about macroevolution to see for myself if it is truly a plausible scenario. Thanks again to Jellyslayer for the links.

Since you're interested in macro evolution, I'm now going to start a monologue - I'm sorry if it's all a bit off-topic and personal.

For my research thesis I've been working with evolutionary algorithms. Ok, so what are that?

Suppose you have an optimization problem, like the design of a car (where you want to optimize the materials and thickness of various components for best strength, durability, price, etc). Suppose that you have a way to calculate the performance of any given potential solution to that problem. An evolutionary algorithm is a way to search systematically for good solutions.

It works as follows. You start by creating a bunch of random potential solutions. You encode those potential solutions. A classical encoding is to transform them to bitstrings, but you could also go with vectors for example. By analogy, I shall now call these random potential solutions the "population" of "individuals". The encoded data I shall call their "genes". The routine that calculates the performance of a given individual I call the "fitness function".

Lets say that this initial population contains m individuals. Next, we sample random pairs of those individuals and recombine their genes, to create many new individuals. This gives us a new, much larger population of n individuals. We use the fitness function to evaluate all of them. Now we select the m best individuals from them. These go on to the next generation. From there on, the cycle is repeated.

This type of search algorithm works quite well, much better than random search. Incidentally, it is precisely the same as what we call "trial and error", but formalized.

Now here is the reason I'm telling this. A very fundamental property of these algorithms is that while they can be considered "toy models" of biological evolution, they typically end up with individuals that are all alike. So, contrary to nature, where we see a wealth of diversity of coexisting species, in these algorithms you always end up with just one single species! In fact, my whole research thesis was about this question: how can you induce the formation of several coexisting species within an evolutionary algorithm? (The formation of multiple species is also called speciation.)

Microevolution versus macroevolution is all about speciation. A lesson I learned is that to get speciation, you need more than just a cycle of reproduction and selection. You also need several different niches. A niche is a somewhat complicated concept - it means, a place to live (habitat), plus a type of behaviour that allows you to gather food and other vital resources. The fact that you need niches is a non-trivial aspect of evolution, but very important. Without the existance of a multitude of niches, evolution would probably have resulted in only one type of creature.

JellySlayer
08-03-2010, 09:36 PM
You're missing one point on free will: it swings both ways. If He can't punish you for doing evil, how could He reward you for doing good?

One analogy I like to use is the tax system. The tax system in most countries is coercive: you pay your taxes, and if you refuse, then you go to jail. That is, paying your taxes isn't really a choice, because one of the options is really, really bad (and even after you go to jail, the government may still be able to confiscate your property to pay your tax anyway, depending on where you live). Now let's say you had a system where you can choose to pay taxes, but if you don't, then you don't get to use any government services. This is a free choice because both options are reasonable. Heaven versus hell is not a reasonable choice because one of the choices is so outrageously bad--nobody would voluntarily choose hell. You can still have rewards, the key is not having coercion: if the choice were "Do these things and you go to heaven" or "Don't do these things and nothing happens to you", the choice isn't coercive.


Yup. But offering to take someone else's punishment has always been valid. Christ chose to suffer for us; he wasn't forced into it.

I don't think I can believe this without evidence (the first part, not the second). I'm not an expert in law, but I'd be very surprised to learn that this is an established legal principle in any country. It's not abundantly clear to me that the second point can be taken as given either, but I'm not enough of a theologian to be able to dispute it.


Two points: Eternal judgement isn't putting your life on a large scale to see if the good outweighs the bad; it's more of a "Where are you trying to go? Let Me get you there quicker." Hereditary sin would also have its opposite and be positive.

I'm not sure what you mean by this.

fazisi
08-03-2010, 09:49 PM
Heaven is having fun on your way to hell.

Hell is the shit you have to go through before you get to heaven.

Silfir
08-03-2010, 10:18 PM
I thought that was Purgatory?

fazisi
08-03-2010, 11:16 PM
Doctors' offices have waiting rooms, heaven does not.

grobblewobble
08-04-2010, 12:38 AM
> he who has sinned once (everybody) deserves eternal agony and torment in hell.

You're from kentucky, aren't you? We prolly live really close to each other :)

This has to be one of the funniest quotes of 2010.

Albahan
08-04-2010, 12:49 AM
I'd say purgatory is more of a "Purging" than a waiting room. Besides in purgatory there is nothing to base time off of so theoretically you wouldn't be 'waiting' at all.

Jellyslayer: I understand where your coming from and your viewpoints and I can understand why you turned away from Christianity but there are a few things you should consider.

"I'm being blamed for something I didn't do" Well actually if you were in Adam and Eve's place of being completely innocent and without sin you would have also succumbed to the temptation of the devil to eat the fruit. I believe Adam and Eve to be a metaphor for every man and woman meaning that any man or woman that was like them would have made the exact same choice.

Another thing to remember is that the instant you sin or do something wrong you're already forgiven by God. However people have a very hard time believing this and accepting it. The God I believe in is very forgiving and accepting. He doesn't punish us for anything we don't or wouldn't do.

As for Christ you say God is immoral for having His son die for the sins of man but what you fail to recognize is that Christ is a part of God they are 1 in the same so in a way its as though God died for our sins. It was the greatest act of mercy due to man's natural inclination to give into temptation basically telling us that as long as we accept him and realize our imperfections that He will show mercy upon us and let us into heaven. No one can say for sure who is going to Hell and who isn't because we don't know the limits of God's mercy.

garyd
08-04-2010, 02:42 AM
Basic Chrisitianity put in as simple and straight forwar away as I can manage.:

1. Sin is selfishness. Therefore anytime you put your self, your needs, or your feelings first you have sinned.
Also no one then goes to hell for anything they didn't do. We drop out the shoot selfish and damn few of us get a hell of a lot better over time.

2. No good thing you do makes you one whit less guilty of the bad things you have done. Karma has no place in Christianity and is not really logical in any case.

3. Salvation is what God does and is in no way is due to the actions of men. And thank God for that, if heaven is peopled by braggarts telling of all the wonderful things they've done then give me hell.

4. Hell is hell not because of the heat, which is, in certain ways, more of a last mercy than a punishment, but because there are absolutely no illusions and the question, "Why me?" is seldom asked more than once for in hell it is not a rhetorical question and always gets an answer in great detail.

5.Godly works are the joyful response to a salvation already vouchsafed not the coin by which salvation is purchased.

gut
08-04-2010, 03:56 AM
> The New Testament includes

I said 'parts in red'.

> the sections on human sacrifice (of Christ),

As was already stated, jesus = god. Besides... he came back.

> hereditary sin, and eternal judgment, all of
> which I consider to be pretty malevolent ideas.

Again, god may consider things quite differently that a human.

> I didn't eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

That's a weak argument. If god did create earth, you, and
everything else, you have no right to wine about what he
does or doesn't allocate to you or for what reasons. It's
his world, he can do what he likes with it. You wanna have
things your way, go create yer own universe.

Who knows? Maybe Earth is something of a testing grounds for
souls. Maybe god wants to know which ones are worth keeping
and which ones are go to the bin. You go around killing,
stealing, treating everyone like crap, you get dusted.

JellySlayer
08-04-2010, 06:09 AM
I said 'parts in red'.

The words of Jesus only make up a small fragment of the New Testament. Most of the New Testament is the words of Paul, if anything.


> the sections on human sacrifice (of Christ),

As was already stated, jesus = god. Besides... he came back.

Just because God sacrificed himself to Himself doesn't make the idea of Him perfoming human sacrifice less abhorrent. More pointless, maybe.


> hereditary sin, and eternal judgment, all of
> which I consider to be pretty malevolent ideas.

Again, god may consider things quite differently that a human.

> I didn't eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

That's a weak argument. If god did create earth, you, and
everything else, you have no right to wine about what he
does or doesn't allocate to you or for what reasons. It's
his world, he can do what he likes with it. You wanna have
things your way, go create yer own universe.

Who knows? Maybe Earth is something of a testing grounds for
souls. Maybe god wants to know which ones are worth keeping
and which ones are go to the bin. You go around killing,
stealing, treating everyone like crap, you get dusted.

This may be the case. But if it is, I stand by my contention a God that would do things in such a manner is, by the moral reasoning that He apparently gave me to judge such things, objectively evil. We certainly would never treat each other as cruelly or illogically as God treats us. We aren't as brutal to our children as He is to his creation. We don't design laws as that are as unjust as the ones that He created. God seems to spent an awful lot of His time killing, stealinng, and treating everyone like crap. If the Bible is correct, then God is a sadist and tyrant, deserving neither of praise, nor of worship, nor of thanks.



"I'm being blamed for something I didn't do" Well actually if you were in Adam and Eve's place of being completely innocent and without sin you would have also succumbed to the temptation of the devil to eat the fruit. I believe Adam and Eve to be a metaphor for every man and woman meaning that any man or woman that was like them would have made the exact same choice.

Convicting someone for a crime that they might hypothetically have done is still immoral. And then, too, while I know that you personally didn't raise this point, I would contend that if all humans would have made the same choice as Adam and Eve, then clearly the issue had nothing to do with free will. We were designed to fail.


Another thing to remember is that the instant you sin or do something wrong you're already forgiven by God. However people have a very hard time believing this and accepting it. The God I believe in is very forgiving and accepting. He doesn't punish us for anything we don't or wouldn't do.

Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness. 5But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin. 6No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him. 1 John 3:4-6

26If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, 27but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. 28Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. 29How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? 30For we know him who said, "It is mine to avenge; I will repay,"[d] and again, "The Lord will judge his people."[e] 31It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Hebrews 11:26-31..

grobblewobble
08-04-2010, 09:33 AM
Alright, some more spam about macro evolution. I would like to try and explain the point about niches a little better.

The essential point to realize about those niches is that each one has only a limited carrying capacity. That is, they can each only support a limited number of individuals. When a niche is not filled yet, the first individuals that are able to fill the niche are in an extremely advantageous situation, because food is abundant and they find themselves without competition. In contrast, individuals in a niche that is being overexploited will face a hard time, no matter how well adapted they are to that niche.

So that is the driving force behind speciation. It is also what is ultimately missing in evolutionary algorithms, where there is a fitness function, but no such thing as a limited carrying capacity.

The transition of fish to amphibian is again a nice example. Amphibians aren't terrible well adapted to life on land, but when they first evolved, they were the only animals on a land full of food, which made it much easier for them to survive.

I hope I'm helping you at all, Fasizi. You can find lots more on speciation on the wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution#Speciation. The wiki on evolution is really excellent.

gut
08-04-2010, 09:52 AM
> The words of Jesus only make up a small fragment of the New
> Testament. Most of the New Testament is the words of Paul,

Now you're talking my language.

> We certainly would never treat each other as cruelly

You sure about that?

> or illogically as God treats us

I can only speak for myself, but I can't complain.

> We aren't as brutal to our children as He is to his creation

You prolly don't watch the evening news, eh?

I'll say it again, I can't complain. The world I live
in is often a brutal one, but it works. Has for a long
time. Baby deer getting eaten by wolves seems a bit
brutal, regardless of whether it is the way of evolution
or god. Seems cruel, but the system works. Like I asked
before, you got a better way? If you tried it your way,
it would prolly fail, mine too.

> We don't design laws as that are as unjust as the ones that He created

Now, that's just crazy talk! Our legal system can compete
with any craziness the universe has to offer. Where I live,
you get more prison time for tax evasion than murder. You
could eat people and be on the street a few weeks later if you
get your case thrown out on technicalities. In my home town we
can't legally buy or sell alcohol, but we can manufacture and
consume any quantities we like. We can even ship it via mail.
I could go on eternally :D

grobblewobble
08-04-2010, 10:26 AM
> or illogically as God treats us

I can only speak for myself, but I can't complain.

Just wait until you're condemned to eternal suffering for the dirty words you spoke about Grey.

Theym
08-04-2010, 11:26 AM
Another thing to remember is that the instant you sin or do something wrong you're already forgiven by God. However people have a very hard time believing this and accepting it. The God I believe in is very forgiving and accepting. He doesn't punish us for anything we don't or wouldn't do.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it also a sin to imagine adultry, even though according to the Bible the 'Devil' puts the thoughts into our heads?

Albahan
08-04-2010, 12:44 PM
Convicting someone for a crime that they might hypothetically have done is still immoral. And then, too, while I know that you personally didn't raise this point, I would contend that if all humans would have made the same choice as Adam and Eve, then clearly the issue had nothing to do with free will. We were designed to fail.


We were designed as innocent beings with free will. It basically comes down to whether you would rather be a being with no free will that does only good all the time or a being that has free will and will thus give into temptation when we are tempted.

>No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him

This is what we are to strive for in our lifetime, though few come close to this.

>If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left

The words "received the knowledge of the truth" lead me to believe that this is after we have died and have been "enlightened" so to speak at which point there is nothing that would cause you to sin so this should be no problem.

Edit: @Theym well its more like imagining you're having sex with another woman in which case it is something you would or would want to do if you were given the opportunity. Besides you're already objectifying the person which is probably a sin in itself. Though I'm not saying I'm not guilty of this or that you're some sort of disgusting pig for doing so.

minchazo
08-04-2010, 01:25 PM
@ JellySlayer RE this:

Two points: Eternal judgment isn't putting your life on a large scale to see if the good outweighs the bad; it's more of a "Where are you trying to go? Let Me get you there quicker." Hereditary sin would also have its opposite and be positive.

I'll try to explain better. The idea of 'Hereditary sin' is pretty easy for me, 'cause if my parents decided to do something (for example) like ban education, I'd have a tougher time in life. If they do the opposite and encouraged education, I'd be better off. In that manner I am affected by what my parents do and hereditary sin is only different in magnitude.

As for eternal judgment, I guess it's due to my opinion of what hell is. To my mind, the 'fire and brimstone' idea is a metaphor. Instead, it's similar our current world, but without the good bits we have (i.e. compassion, loyalty, empathy, etc). Imagine a world where you can't die, but everyone is trying to be 'dictator for life' of the entire world, or own the planet by any means necessary. Not my idea of a pleasant place, but there are those that would try to get there.

JellySlayer
08-04-2010, 03:16 PM
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it also a sin to imagine adultry, even though according to the Bible the 'Devil' puts the thoughts into our heads?

If it makes you feel better, it's only a sin if the woman is married, by definition of adultery. Single women are totally fair game. [Men too, I suppose]


Now, that's just crazy talk! Our legal system can compete
with any craziness the universe has to offer. Where I live,
you get more prison time for tax evasion than murder. You
could eat people and be on the street a few weeks later if you
get your case thrown out on technicalities. In my home town we
can't legally buy or sell alcohol, but we can manufacture and
consume any quantities we like. We can even ship it via mail.
I could go on eternally

God makes it a sin to be born, punishable by torture for all eternity...

Some other godly weirdness.

-You can't wear clothes made from two different kinds of fabric (Lev 19:19)
-God forbids you to shave (Lev. 19:27) and get tattoos (19:28)
-Cursing your parents is punishable by death (Lev 20:9)
-Having sex with a women during her period is criminal (Lev 20:18)
-If people in a town preach the worship of another God, the entire town is to be put to death, including the animals (Deut 13:12-15)

This one I'm just going to quote verbatim:
-"28 If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, 29 he shall pay the girl's father fifty shekels of silver. [c] He must marry the girl, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives. " (Deut 22:28-29).

Then there's thought crimes:
-Thinking about commiting adultery is the same as commiting it. (Matt 5:27-32)
-You can't covet your neighbour's ass (among other things) (10th commandment)
-There's the whole not believing thing leading to eternal damnation.

gut
08-04-2010, 06:21 PM
> Just wait until you're condemned to eternal suffering
> for the dirty words you spoke about Grey

I'll regret nothing.

> God makes it a sin to be born, punishable by torture for all eternity...

Now, that's not true. My understanding is that one is deprived of heaven only
for acting too jackass. Makes sense, as heaven should be a jackass-free zone,
else it wouldn't be heaven.

You say 'god makes it a sin', but it isn't the words of god you are quoting.
You quote the words of men who claim to know what irritates god. Is it a
wonder that much of it doens't add up?

Your ability to quote scripture really is impressive. Are you getting this
already pre-gathered from a web site, or was it just drilled into you that
much when you were young. If that kind of stuff had been drilled into me,
I'd prolly rebel too. I think it is good to remember that the bible is a
compiled work. It is highly unlikely that 100% of what's there should be.

> -You can't wear clothes made from two different kinds of fabric (Lev 19:19)

I'm a 100% cotton kind of guy. The rest of you can burn for all I care.

> -God forbids you to shave (Lev. 19:27) and get tattoos (19:28)

May as well ban working too hard... wait, they did that too! No wonder I like
this religion!

> -Cursing your parents is punishable by death (Lev 20:9)

I'd say that's too lenient unless it's death via soap vs mouth. Oddly, cursing
Grey's parents is actually encouraged. I can't remember exactly where I read
it... I think it's toward the back somewhere.

> -Having sex with a women during her period is criminal (Lev 20:18)

...and discusting. Don't forget discusting.

> -If people in a town preach the worship of another God, the entire
> town is to be put to death, including the animals (Deut 13:12-15)

Well how do you know it wasn't the animals that started the other religion? If
the people of a town are so mentally inferior that they allow a group of calves
to outwit them into worshipping (as opposed to eating) them, they deserve what
they get. That's smart thinking evolution-wise too.

> -You can't covet your neighbour's ass

I break that one all the time. Well, it's a fine ass! Still, I don't think
it'll be a problem for me, as I don't plan to appropriate said ass by ass-type
methods such as killing or stealing. Actually, that makes it more a case
of inspire rather than covet. Maybe I'll work to get my own amazing ass.

JellySlayer
08-04-2010, 07:31 PM
Now, that's not true. My understanding is that one is deprived of heaven only
for acting too jackass. Makes sense, as heaven should be a jackass-free zone,
else it wouldn't be heaven.

As far as I know, the Bible never uses the word "jackass" ;)

In all seriousness, the Bible claims that the only route to Heaven is through belief in Jesus (John 14:6 among others). Whether anything else in particular is required (baptism, communion, good works) depends somewhat on what specific denomination you believe in. I just want to reiterate this point because it's kind of important: most Christian denominations believe that what you do here on Earth makes no differences as long as you, at the time of your death, believe in Jesus as your personal saviour. They also get a bit squeamish about the point when it's noted that such requirements would allow somebody like . . . Stalin . . . to get into Heaven. I realise that you personally may not believe this; however, I contend that these are fairly mainstream beliefs in Christian circles.


You say 'god makes it a sin', but it isn't the words of god you are quoting.
You quote the words of men who claim to know what irritates god. Is it a
wonder that much of it doens't add up?

Well, if the Bible isn't true, I think it's fairly safe to contend that none of Christianity is true, given that all of the foundational beliefs and teachings from Christianity stem from the Bible. It's not really too much of a leap from there to agnostic (unless you pick up another religion instead), and the difference between agnostic and atheist is mostly semantic. [edit]Many Christians (again, not necessarily you personally), believe that the whole of the Bible is the inerrant, inspired, Word of God.


Your ability to quote scripture really is impressive. Are you getting this
already pre-gathered from a web site, or was it just drilled into you that
much when you were young. If that kind of stuff had been drilled into me,
I'd prolly rebel too. I think it is good to remember that the bible is a
compiled work. It is highly unlikely that 100% of what's there should be.

A bit of both, actually. As I mentioned earlier, I've read the Bible several times. There's bits and pieces that are memorized. There's a lot more that I can fairly reliably say "I know that there's a verse in 1 John that says something like this" and go look it up pretty quickly. It's worth saying too, that my deconversion is relatively recent, and I had prior to that been spending a great deal of time reading the Bible and various (both Christian and secular) commentaries on it, so a lot of the material is pretty fresh in my memory.

Albahan
08-04-2010, 08:11 PM
Some other godly weirdness.

-You can't wear clothes made from two different kinds of fabric (Lev 19:19)
-God forbids you to shave (Lev. 19:27) and get tattoos (19:28)
-Cursing your parents is punishable by death (Lev 20:9)
-Having sex with a women during her period is criminal (Lev 20:18)
-If people in a town preach the worship of another God, the entire town is to be put to death, including the animals (Deut 13:12-15)

This one I'm just going to quote verbatim:
-"28 If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, 29 he shall pay the girl's father fifty shekels of silver. [c] He must marry the girl, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives. " (Deut 22:28-29).


All of these are Old Testament teachings and, I believe are basically obsolete teachings that have been replaced by those of Christ. An example of this is when Jesus basically reduces the commandments to two; "you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' "The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these." (NAS, Mark 12:28-31) One of the reasons Jesus died was so that we wouldn't have to be judged by Old Testament teachings and rules.

>most Christian denominations believe that what you do here on Earth makes no differences as long as you, at the time of your death, believe in Jesus as your personal saviour.

One of the reasons I like being Catholic. We believe salvation comes from faith and works so what you do on Earth really does matter. This is one of the biggest differences between Protestants and Catholics as most Protestant denominations believe in what you said, that they can get by on faith alone which then leads to paradoxes such as Stalin making it to Heaven. Though really if you truly believe in it all the whole works thing should come pretty naturally.

JellySlayer
08-04-2010, 08:34 PM
All of these are Old Testament teachings and, I believe are basically obsolete teachings that have been replaced by those of Christ. An example of this is when Jesus basically reduces the commandments to two; "you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' "The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these." (NAS, Mark 12:28-31) One of the reasons Jesus died was so that we wouldn't have to be judged by Old Testament teachings and rules.

You do realise that Jesus is quoting the Torah there, right? The footnotes on Mark 12:28-31 should direct you to Deut 6:4,5 and Lev 19:18, respectively. Both of those commandments are from the Old Testament.

As far as the Old Testament teaching being obsolete, I agree that except for a few fringe denominations, most Christians accept that those teachings shouldn't be applied today (although, many seem to have an attachment to things like the Ten Commandments, but be that as it may). Nonetheless, these things do speak about the character of God. The Israelites were (are) God's chosen people, and these are the things that He felt was important for them to know/do, and failure to follow these laws was sin. Hence while we may not follow these practices now, I think that, for example, Deut 22:28-29 does tell us something about what God thinks of rape, and of women.

Silfir
08-04-2010, 09:04 PM
I think that, for example, Deut 22:28-29 does tell us something about what God thinks of rape, and of women.

No. It tells us something about what people at the time - whoever wrote Deuteronomy, probably a bunch of priests - thought of rape, and of women.

Anyway, would it be accurate to say that you believe in God, but you don't like what you have been led to believe?



The attachment of Christians to the Ten Commandments could be easily explained by the fact that Jesus repeated them somewhere in the New Testament. They are kind of a big deal like that ;)

JellySlayer
08-04-2010, 09:28 PM
No. It tells us something about what people at the time - whoever wrote Deuteronomy, probably a bunch of priests - thought of rape, and of women.

Anyway, would it be accurate to say that you believe in God, but you don't like what you have been led to believe?

Well, I can fairly definitively say that I don't believe in Christianity anymore. Christianity is, in its entirety, based off of the teachings of the Bible. I've illustrated, I consider many of these to be immoral, and many of the claims that it makes, historical, scientific or otherwise, appear to be completely false. While the Bible offers some teachings that are moral, most of these are things that we could just as easily get from secular sources. A rejection of the Bible naturally implies a rejection of the Christian faith and the Chrisitan God, since the Bible is the only source of information that we have about Him.

I can't completely rule out the existence of some supernatural agency, but I can say that at the moment I rank the existence of a god of some variety only slightly more probable than the existence of Santa Claus.


The attachment of Christians to the Ten Commandments could be easily explained by the fact that Jesus repeated them somewhere in the New Testament. They are kind of a big deal like that ;)

Jesus discusses a few of them briefly at the sermon on the mount, if memory serves, but I'm pretty positive he doesn't quote them at length. Feel free to prove me wrong.

fazisi
08-04-2010, 11:22 PM
Some other godly weirdness.
These were rules written by man for man. Like gut stated, our laws of today are pretty fucking strange. The rules written in the early old testament were the laws created to govern the people. By today's standards, some of them are outright crazy. I like the ones they have concerning stolen property though. Back then, the theif or the person responsible for the stolen goods had to pay back the owner a multiple of what was stolen.

Oh, Silfir already answered this later:

No. It tells us something about what people at the time - whoever wrote Deuteronomy, probably a bunch of priests - thought of rape, and of women.


In all seriousness, the Bible claims that the only route to Heaven is through belief in Jesus (John 14:6 among others). Whether anything else in particular is required (baptism, communion, good works) depends somewhat on what specific denomination you believe in. I just want to reiterate this point because it's kind of important: most Christian denominations believe that what you do here on Earth makes no differences as long as you, at the time of your death, believe in Jesus as your personal saviour. They also get a bit squeamish about the point when it's noted that such requirements would allow somebody like . . . Stalin . . . to get into Heaven. I realise that you personally may not believe this; however, I contend that these are fairly mainstream beliefs in Christian circles.
If you truly believed in your heart that Jesus was your lord and savior, you probably wouldn't do the things that Stalin did.


the difference between agnostic and atheist is mostly semantic.
I disagree. There is a difference between saying you don't know if there is a deity or deities and saying there are no deities.


P.S. I'm not always trying to pick on Jellyslayer, but he's the only one saying something in this thread that I can say something other than "I agree" (usually to Silfir) or "Stop trying to be cute." followed by a smack upside the head (wish I could do this to gut sometimes...)

Silfir
08-05-2010, 12:18 AM
I also agree with fazisi, he's got the atheist/agnostic thing right. It is possible to be agnostic and theist, and it's possible to be atheist and agnostic. It is also possible to be either atheist or theist without being agnostic.

Could Stalin be forgiven for his crimes and ascend to heaven, if he was truly repentant? I think the message is supposed to be "No matter how deep you get yourself in shit, you always have an option". As in, you can never say "I did so many evil things, I'll burn in hell anyway, so why not do more evil things", because you always have the choice to stop doing evil, and possibly not burn in hell. True repentance doesn't come by easy though - if you only "become good" in the eye of impending death for fear of suffering the consequences of your actions, rather than true compassion for the people you had killed, I doubt that will count for much as far as "accepting Jesus Christ in your heart as your personal lord and savior" goes. I'd like to think that Stalin was beyond having compassion for your fellow man cloud his murderous paranoia.

grobblewobble
08-05-2010, 12:25 AM
Since this has become a theological thread anyway I will stop trying to talk about evolution and say something about what I believe instead. I doubt anyone is interested in that crap, but at least I might offer Fasizi something to disagree with. ;)

I have very similar reasons as Jellyslayer to reject Christianity: a God that first creates man as imperfect and then sentences those who fail to eternal suffering is an incredibly cruel God. Well, Jellyslayer already made the same point much more eloquently than I could, so no reason to dwell on it.

However, imho the existence of a world like this without any kind of deeper meaning or purpose is also very hard to accept. Besides, I feel a connection with something higher than me - whether this means I belong in a madhouse is up to you to judge. After reading stuff from different belief systems, I found something that strongly rings true with me. So I will try to explain it and keep it as short as I can.

So I believe in God. God is everything: you, me, the air we breath and the ground we walk on, the laws of nature and infinitely much more than that, up to and beyond the horizons of the known universe; it is all God. It appears that we live in a universe made up of all kinds of different things, but in a deeper sense, all of those different things are one and that one is God. Dualism is essentially an illusion.

So why is there a universe? Why is there an illusion of dualism? Why is there suffering?

Without the illusion of dualism, God has no way to express what He is. God has qualities such as being good and loving and humorous, but those concepts have no meaning in a world without dualities. So God split itself up into a of dualities. Our universe is a tiny part of that great illusion and we are part of it. We made ourselves forget that it is an illusion, so that it seems more real. This illusion of dualism offers us a great opportunity to express and experience what we are - what God is.

There is no goal that must be reached, no lessons that must be learned and God will never judge our actions, let alone punish. That does not mean there is no reason to strive to be good. Being good is a much more joyous and satisfying experience than being evil. The deeper reason for that is that we are all one, so whatever bad you do onto your neighbour you do onto yourself.

There is one poem I'd like to share (or annoy you with).

Where is the path?
- It is right in front if you.
Then why can't I see it myself?
- Because you are thinking of yourself.
And you, can you see it?
- As long as you're thinking in terms of "you" and "me", you will never see clearly.
If there is no you and no me, how is it possible to see the path?
- If there is no you and no me, then who wants to see it?

gut
08-05-2010, 01:03 AM
> believe that what you do here on Earth makes no differences as
> long as you, at the time of your death, believe in Jesus
...
> I realise that you personally may not believe this

Most certainly don't. I figure it in terms of probability. I think
the liklihood is rather remote that an all-powerful being would make
a pass/fail system for souls, and make it contingent upon no deeds,
but instead a last-minute belief. To my figuring, that seems much
more likely the system of one group of humans to acquire/maintain a
monopoly upon their people's beliefs.

> if the Bible isn't true, I think it's fairly safe to contend that
> none of Christianity is true

Gotta disagree agian. I didn't say the bible is invalid. I said that some
parts/books of the bible seem less the thoughts of an omnipotent god, and
more the thoughts of a few multi-centuries-dead, middle-eastern, middle-
aged males trying to exert influence over the behaviors of their people. I
don't even attatch 100% faith to the verbatim accounts of jesus's words,
as I doubt he wrote them himself as he spoke them. When he said 'go and
sin no more', the words were prolly slightly different (especially
considering translation), but I believe the gist of it is true.

> Many Christians (again, not necessarily you personally), believe that
> the whole of the Bible is the inerrant, inspired, Word of God.

Again, I find it improbable that an omnipotent god would destroy the
world via flood, then say 'whoops'. I find it probable that a human would
tell that story to teach a lesson.

> my deconversion is relatively recent

It seems you are giving christ a bum wrap. You read words written by said
'multi-centuries-dead, middle-eastern, middle-aged males', then express
irritation that 'god's beliefs' seem to mirror too closely that of ancient
patriarchal middle-eastern males. Maybe attatch more wieght to the words
of jesus. Maybe attatch most wieght to the works. I can't find anything to
complain about what I remember of jesus's works: cleansing leppors, helping
the needy, being humble, etc... I believe that, and believe in it. Take my
ideas with a grain of salt though, as I haven't read even one book of the
bible in my life, and my memory is crap at best.


fazisi:
> "Stop trying to be cute." followed by a smack upside the head (wish I
> could do this to gut sometimes...)

and this follows IN THIS THREAD:

fazisi:
> Like gut stated, our laws of today are pretty fucking strange

and...

fazisi:
> I have a pair of rules on how internet debates should be handled.
> 1. I am always right.
> 2. Nothing I say will ever change my opponent's beliefs so just have fun.

Hey, my memory isn't always crap :D

gut
08-05-2010, 01:22 AM
> Besides, I feel a connection with something higher than me

Not me. Never. Not even for a nanosecond.

> God is everything: you, me, the air we breath and the ground we

Again, not me.

For me it's logic. The world (universe) I see is too well designed to
have not been designed. I look at trees and judge them to be miracles.
Humans, for all of our intelligence, ability, organization, and
teamwork, cannot now, nor will ever create trees or anything
as miraculous.

I'll thank god for the trees, the sun, the earth, the rain, my
existance, etc... I'll love and try to please god, as it seems
logical that is my part of my intended function. Seems natural that
a being created capable of appreciating and loving god prolly should.

grobblewobble
08-05-2010, 01:37 AM
The world (universe) I see is too well designed to have not been designed.

I didn't say the world hasn't been designed.

Now about evolution especially. Evolution and design is the same thing, if you look at it from a certain angle. How do you go about designing something? You try some approach. If the approach works well, you start to improve on it. If is doesn't work well, you try something else. This is precisely the same as what happens in biological evolution. In my view, biological evolution and God creating species are two descriptions of the same thing.

garyd
08-05-2010, 04:10 AM
No one goes to hell for any one thing he's done. Hell is a species of lifetime acheivement award.

JellySlayer
08-05-2010, 06:28 AM
> if the Bible isn't true, I think it's fairly safe to contend that
> none of Christianity is true

Gotta disagree agian. I didn't say the bible is invalid. I said that some
parts/books of the bible seem less the thoughts of an omnipotent god, and
more the thoughts of a few multi-centuries-dead, middle-eastern, middle-
aged males trying to exert influence over the behaviors of their people. I
don't even attatch 100% faith to the verbatim accounts of jesus's words,
as I doubt he wrote them himself as he spoke them. When he said 'go and
sin no more', the words were prolly slightly different (especially
considering translation), but I believe the gist of it is true.

How does it make sense to talk about Jesus without acknowledging the context of His actions? His supposed divinity is established based on Old Testament prophecies that refer to the coming of the Messiah; the reason for his appearance on Earth is based on principles established in the OT; a significant portion of his time is in fact spent teaching about the Scriptures, and he constantly references them and acknowledges their validity.


> Many Christians (again, not necessarily you personally), believe that
> the whole of the Bible is the inerrant, inspired, Word of God.

Again, I find it improbable that an omnipotent god would destroy the
world via flood, then say 'whoops'. I find it probable that a human would
tell that story to teach a lesson.

The problem then is this: how do you pick and choose which pieces of the Bible to keep? How do you know that the words are Jesus are actually things that he said, whereas the pieces that you find problematic in the OT (or possibly parts of the NT) are just things written by men?


> my deconversion is relatively recent

[...] Maybe attatch more wieght to the words
of jesus. Maybe attatch most wieght to the works. I can't find anything to
complain about what I remember of jesus's works: cleansing leppors, helping
the needy, being humble, etc... I believe that, and believe in it. Take my
ideas with a grain of salt though, as I haven't read even one book of the
bible in my life, and my memory is crap at best.

It is entirely possible to be a good person without any reference to the supernatural. I certainly have no problem with morality; indeed, as I've said, I largely reject the Bible on moral grounds. If Jesus was a good person and did good things, that's laudable, but it's not divine. Not to be too hard on the guy, but if he were both the supreme creator of the universe and a really nice guy, you think he might have mentioned a few things that would have really helped alleviate human suffering such as: slavery is a bad idea; men and women should be treated equally; most sickness and disease can be prevented by washing your hands before you eat, and bathing regularly.


If you truly believed in your heart that Jesus was your lord and savior, you probably wouldn't do the things that Stalin did.

Some Christian denominations believe that your works here on Earth are irrelevant and that grace alone is enough to lead to salvation. You probably wouldn't do the things Stalin did, but, according to their theology, you could, and you'd still get into heaven. I'm not saying that it's not a flawed doctrine, but a surprising number of people believe it.


I disagree. There is a difference between saying you don't know if there is a deity or deities and saying there are no deities.

Well, the problem with saying "there are no deities" is that it's impossible to definitively claim a negative. The best you can say is that the probability of something happening is so vanishingly small, that is isn't worth considering. I can't categorically say there is no Santa Claus, either, but the case for Santa is pretty thin. That's why I say that the distinction is semantic: in practical terms, an atheist is an agnostic who assigns the probability of supernatural deities to a value so vanishingly small it isn't worth considering.


P.S. I'm not always trying to pick on Jellyslayer, but he's the only one saying something in this thread that I can say something other than "I agree" (usually to Silfir) or "Stop trying to be cute." followed by a smack upside the head (wish I could do this to gut sometimes...)

I don't mind at all; I appreciate your contributions to our discussion.

[edit]

Now about evolution especially. Evolution and design is the same thing, if you look at it from a certain angle. How do you go about designing something? You try some approach. If the approach works well, you start to improve on it. If is doesn't work well, you try something else. This is precisely the same as what happens in biological evolution. In my view, biological evolution and God creating species are two descriptions of the same thing.

As an on-topic tangent to the current discussion, I'll add that in some sense, evolution is a much sexier solution to the problem than a special creation. I like to think of it in terms of coding. If I can create a program that does exactly what I want using 4 lines of code, that is a much better design than the guy who has to take 10,000 lines full of complicated exceptions and cheap hacks to do the same thing. Likewise, if God could create the entire universe exactly as He wanted using only one or two simple physical laws, that's damn well more impressive than the God who has to constantly intervene in every minute detail of His creation. That's probably the physicist in me talking more than anything else though ;)

fazisi
08-05-2010, 07:01 AM
If I could write a working complex system in six days and relax for a day and not have to go back to make any fixes, I would consider myself a damn good system designer.


So I believe in God. God is everything: you, me, the air we breath and the ground we walk on, the laws of nature and infinitely much more than that, up to and beyond the horizons of the known universe; it is all God. It appears that we live in a universe made up of all kinds of different things, but in a deeper sense, all of those different things are one and that one is God. Dualism is essentially an illusion.
This is very similar to my perception of what God is.

JellySlayer
08-05-2010, 07:09 AM
If I could write a working complex system in six days and relax for a day and not have to go back to make any fixes, I would consider myself a damn good system designer.

But if you could make the entire universe evolve on its own from a single particle, you'd be a better one.

gut
08-05-2010, 07:49 AM
> His supposed divinity is established based on Old Testament prophecies

I thought it was established by the fact that he returned from the dead.

> a significant portion of his time is in fact spent teaching about the Scriptures

Or contradicting them. I don't think 'go and sin no more' was in harmony
with the OT teachings. He opposed the existing religious 'authorities'
to such an extent that they had him murdered.

> how do you pick and choose which pieces of the Bible to keep?

I can't give guidelines. If it sounds unbelievable, don't believe it.

> How do you know that the words are Jesus are actually things that he said,
> whereas the pieces that you find problematic in the OT (or possibly parts
> of the NT) are just things written by men?

For me, I suppose it's just logic. What would god care about? Prolly more
how we conduct ourselves than what clothing material we chose.

> you think he might have mentioned a few things
...
> slavery is a bad idea; men and women should be treated equally;

Didn't he talk of cleanliness, and how to treat neighbors?

> wouldn't do the things Stalin did, but, according to their theology, you could,

If memory serves, and I'm REALLY out of my element here, Stalin would
have to be baptised.

Silfir
08-05-2010, 10:49 AM
The problem then is this: how do you pick and choose which pieces of the Bible to keep? How do you know that the words are Jesus are actually things that he said, whereas the pieces that you find problematic in the OT (or possibly parts of the NT) are just things written by men?

Science! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exegesis)

Everything in the Bible is "just things written by men"! Including the four evangelia - as far as I remember, Mark is the oldest, John the newest, and they were all written a good bit after 100 AD. (And they represent second-hand accounts of the actions and words of Jesus, naturally.) Put harshly: It's not the all-or-nothing deal you're trying to make it. You don't pick or choose which bits to "keep", you interpret and analyze why things were written and to which intent. At least that has been what I was thought is the purpose of roman-catholic theology.

Of course Jesus constantly refers to old scriptures - the people he was interacting with weren't Christians of today, but Jews of his time, who would be familiar with the old scriptures (and still following a lot of them). Those were the days when the rules in question were still the norm (and when other cultures would often be even more immoral). Sure, that was a crueler time, with morals we would today rate as indefensible. Times change, and religions changes with them.

JellySlayer
08-05-2010, 03:42 PM
Science! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exegesis)

Everything in the Bible is "just things written by men"! Including the four evangelia - as far as I remember, Mark is the oldest, John the newest, and they were all written a good bit after 100 AD. (And they represent second-hand accounts of the actions and words of Jesus, naturally.) Put harshly: It's not the all-or-nothing deal you're trying to make it. You don't pick or choose which bits to "keep", you interpret and analyze why things were written and to which intent. At least that has been what I was thought is the purpose of roman-catholic theology.

Well, that makes things pretty easy, doesn't it? As far as science is concerned, if there is a God, He does not interact with our world in any measurable way. Nor, as far as we've been able to discern, has He ever. In any event, if the Bible isn't authoritative, on what basis can Christianity be believed in? In particular, what elevates Christian traditions above those of Muslims, Buddhists, sun-god-worshippers, or scientologists?


Of course Jesus constantly refers to old scriptures - the people he was interacting with weren't Christians of today, but Jews of his time, who would be familiar with the old scriptures (and still following a lot of them). Those were the days when the rules in question were still the norm (and when other cultures would often be even more immoral). Sure, that was a crueler time, with morals we would today rate as indefensible. Times change, and religions changes with them.

Karen Armstrong's "The History of God" summarizes this idea nicely: it's not that God created man in His image, but rather, man constantly reinvents God in his own image.


> His supposed divinity is established based on Old Testament prophecies

I thought it was established by the fact that he returned from the dead.

Several other people in the Bible were raised from the dead. Both Elijah and Elisha are purported to have raised people from the dead; Lazarus was raised from the dead; Jesus was raised from the dead.


> a significant portion of his time is in fact spent teaching about the Scriptures

Or contradicting them. I don't think 'go and sin no more' was in harmony
with the OT teachings. He opposed the existing religious 'authorities'
to such an extent that they had him murdered.

Go and sin no more would be entirely in harmony with OT teaching. The Old Testament teachings allow for man to get into God's favour by works, and claim that it is entirely within the strength of every person to do so (Deut 30). People were actively discouraged from sinning by a combination of brutal laws and the everpresent reality of a vengeful God. Indeed, pretty much the entirety of texts by the Prophets are calling on the Israelites to repent of their sins and return to God...


>
you think he might have mentioned a few things
...
> slavery is a bad idea; men and women should be treated equally;

Didn't he talk of cleanliness, and how to treat neighbors?

He talked of cleanliness in the sense of "don't eat pigs because they're unclean", not in the sense of "if you wash your hands with soap, it will kill the microscopic organisms on them that will make you and everyone around you sick".

He did talk of how to treat your neighbour, but if that was meant to translate into a categoric ban on slavery or unfair treatment of women, the message was definitely lost. Slavery in "Christendom" persisted for over a thousand years, and women's rights are a decidedly modern phenomenon. Without being too glib, I might add that an omniscient God should presumably have known that such a message was likely to be lost, and, were it sufficiently important to comment on, He probably should have done so more directly.

Silfir
08-05-2010, 03:59 PM
As far as science is concerned, if there is a God, He does not interact with our world in any measurable way.

Precisely! Welcome to agnosticism!

JellySlayer
08-05-2010, 04:29 PM
Precisely! Welcome to agnosticism!

I'm no longer quite sure what we're arguing about then :confused:. I think I've been pretty forthright about my positions on the various issues. While I have no problem debating the finer points of theology, I'm pretty sure that I've never claimed I believe any of it to be true. [edit]If anything, my intention was to demonstrate that many of the points in Christian theology are sufficiently ridiculous that they ought not to inspire belief, let alone worship, of a supernatural God.


This is rather a problem for the creationist side of things, since it is extraordinarily difficult to build a positive case for special creation.


There is far more evidence for evolution than there is evidence for God.

If I were feeling particularly belligerent, I might suggest that there is no evidence for the existence of God.


I think this is what finally lead me away from Christianity. I was able to, at least nominally, accept that God would create the universe in such a way that there'd be no trace of His existence. I was willing to accept that God could tolerate profound suffering worldwide despite His ability to alleviate it. I was prepared to overlook the numerous flaws, inconsistencies, contradictions, and plagarism in the Bible. What ultimately broke my faith was the conclusion that the actions of God, from cover to cover, are not consistent with a benevolent being, but rather, are more consistent with a being that is petty, spiteful, immoral, and unjust. And I'd rather believe in no God at all than a God who is evil.


Well, I can fairly definitively say that I don't believe in Christianity anymore. Christianity is, in its entirety, based off of the teachings of the Bible. I've illustrated, I consider many of these to be immoral, and many of the claims that it makes, historical, scientific or otherwise, appear to be completely false. While the Bible offers some teachings that are moral, most of these are things that we could just as easily get from secular sources. A rejection of the Bible naturally implies a rejection of the Christian faith and the Chrisitan God, since the Bible is the only source of information that we have about Him.

I can't completely rule out the existence of some supernatural agency, but I can say that at the moment I rank the existence of a god of some variety only slightly more probable than the existence of Santa Claus.

gut
08-05-2010, 05:19 PM
> if the Bible isn't authoritative, on what basis
> can Christianity be believed in?

I do it like Silfir said, interpret, not beleive mindlessly.

> Go and sin no more would be entirely in harmony with OT teaching.

Then why were the religious powers that be trying to kill the gal?

> "if you wash your hands with soap, it

The phrase 'cleansing leppers' comes to mind, as well as
some stuff about washing feet. I'd assume hands would be
just as important.

Silfir
08-05-2010, 05:59 PM
Where we differ is not the agnostic part, I'd say, but the rejection of Christianity. Now this might be related to the fact that you used to be a good bit more religious than I ever was, but I've never felt about Christianity as something to oppose, or an immoral religion, or of the Christian God as an immoral God. I guess we simply have differing images of what "Christianity" is.

JellySlayer
08-05-2010, 06:19 PM
> if the Bible isn't authoritative, on what basis
> can Christianity be believed in?

I do it like Silfir said, interpret, not beleive mindlessly.

Here's the problem I have with this. If you are prepared to believe, a priori, that there is a supreme being in the universe who is going to reward or punish you based on your actions, then you damn well better get it right. If supreme being likes slavery and hates women, if you want his favour, you ought to like slavery and hate women too. Our understanding of morality is irrelevant; we have no reason to believe that the supreme being is good. If you're just going to say, well, I don't think supreme being really cares about slavery, even though he said he does, and really he does, that's a problem for you. Religion is by its very nature an all-or-nothing proposition because the stakes are so high. While you can certainly try to interpret how the texts apply to various contexts and what exactly they mean, arbitrarily picking and choosing the parts you like and ignoring the rest is problematic, because you don't know that you won't face condemnation for ignoring the parts that your supreme being thinks are important. If you believe that Jesus is the real supreme being and that the words that He spoke are the reality that will get you rewarded, well, Jesus affirmed that the laws of Moses and the texts of the prophets are from God. If there are certain parts that He wanted you to ignore, He probably should have said something about it.


> Go and sin no more would be entirely in harmony with OT teaching.

Then why were the religious powers that be trying to kill the gal?

Because the laws of Moses sanctioned punishment for sins here. Hell is not an OT concept. If you sinned under OT law, you were punished, up to, and including death, either by God through some dramatic smiting, or by the courts on His behalf. The OT very strongly commanded people not to sin, and allotted punishment for sins as necessary. The difference is that Jesus took this authority for condemnation Himself, and upped the ante from physical death to eternal spiritual death.


> "if you wash your hands with soap, it

The phrase 'cleansing leppers' comes to mind, as well as
some stuff about washing feet. I'd assume hands would be
just as important.

Jesus cleansed lepers by healing them miraculously. He said nothing about basic hygeine. Washing feet was a common custom at the time, and was used by Christ as a metaphor for how Christians ought to serve each other.

fazisi
08-05-2010, 07:32 PM
I guess I should keep my opinions on slavery to myself then... >.>

But really, God doesn't care if you were "free" or "slave" by title. We are all humans. And if we "free" people of today think we are much other than slaves with long leashes, then someone has succeeded in doing a much better job of brain washing than most religious leaders.

gut
08-06-2010, 12:35 AM
>>>>> a significant portion of his time is in fact spent teaching about the Scriptures

>>>> Or contradicting them. I don't think 'go and sin no more' was in harmony
>>>> with the OT teachings. He opposed the existing religious 'authorities'
>>>> to such an extent that they had him murdered.

>>> Go and sin no more would be entirely in harmony with OT teaching.

>> Then why were the religious powers that be trying to kill the gal?

> Because the laws of Moses sanctioned punishment for sins here.

So is it 'entirely in harmony' or 'laws of moses sanctioned punishment'?
You can't have it both ways, as the laws seldom punish people for being
entirely in harmony with the law.

> If supreme being likes slavery and hates women

It would take a lot of creativity to transform 'treat neighbors as you
would be treated' into 'hate women' and 'inslave neighbors'. Not saying
people haven't done that, I'm just saying they were idiots.

> we have no reason to believe that the supreme being is good.

Unless you count the parts where he tells us to be good to each other.

> arbitrarily picking and choosing the parts you like and ignoring
> the rest is problematic

Does my process of interpretation smack of 'arbitrarily picking'? The
process where I rank sentences in red like 'treat others well' more likely
the advice of god, and sentences in black like 'don't wear different types
of fabric' the advice of overbearing politicians? Seems like jesus did the
same. He lauded the value of some OT teachings, yet differed when it came
to executing someone for adultary.

> you don't know that you won't face condemnation

I may be wrong about ranking more highly the deeds of jesus as opposed to
the leviticus teachings, but I figure I'm playing the odds and won't have
any regrets if I'm wrong.

> If there are certain parts that He wanted you to ignore, He probably
> should have said

That's where we are differing. I think he did. He wants me to ignore the
parts that mentioned it being OK to kill people for adultary, because
that's what he did.

> Washing feet was a common custom at the time

So they washed their feet, yet nothing else? Rather odd. Seems like if
someone is going to wash their feet, they'd prolly do the rest, eh?

Grey
08-06-2010, 12:44 AM
> Washing feet was a common custom at the time

So they washed their feet, yet nothing else? Rather odd. Seems like if
someone is going to wash their feet, they'd prolly do the rest, eh?

Are you saying Jesus should have given his disciples a sponge bath?

Anyway, washing a man's feet when he came into a building was considered a job for the lowest servants. In the Bible, Jesus reportedly does it as an act of supreme humility - a sign that he was a servant to humanity, etc etc. However it was only written in John, which I've always found to have great discrepencies with the three earlier gospels. The message is clear, but I personally find it hard to imagine the scene as described really happening.

JellySlayer
08-06-2010, 12:56 AM
>>> Go and sin no more would be entirely in harmony with OT teaching.

So is it 'entirely in harmony' or 'laws of moses sanctioned punishment'?
You can't have it both ways, as the laws seldom punish people for being
entirely in harmony with the law.

I didn't say that she was in harmony with the law; she wasn't. I was that the statement "go and sin no more" is in harmony with the law because the law's purpose is to prevent sin and punish it when it happens. It is entirely consistent to say that she should not sin; that is equivalent to saying "follow the law" because the law defines what sin is.



> If supreme being likes slavery and hates women

It would take a lot of creativity to transform 'treat neighbors as you
would be treated' into 'hate women' and 'inslave neighbors'. Not saying
people haven't done that, I'm just saying they were idiots.

Supreme being might have wanted to take that into consideration then. It is entirely His fault if the words were misunderstood.


> we have no reason to believe that the supreme being is good.

Unless you count the parts where he tells us to be good to each other.

He also tells some of His follows to kill children. Just because you're ignoring those bits doesn't mean they aren't there.


> If there are certain parts that He wanted you to ignore, He probably
> should have said

That's where we are differing. I think he did. He wants me to ignore the
parts that mentioned it being OK to kill people for adultary, because
that's what he did.

"Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven." Matt 5:17-20.

JellySlayer
08-06-2010, 01:23 AM
He also tells some of His follows to kill children. Just because you're ignoring those bits doesn't mean they aren't there.

Suppose I'd better source this.

"Then I heard the LORD say to the other men, "Follow him through the city and kill everyone whose forehead is not marked. Show no mercy; have no pity! Kill them all ? old and young, girls and women and little children. But do not touch anyone with the mark. Begin your task right here at the Temple." So they began by killing the seventy leaders. "Defile the Temple!" the LORD commanded. "Fill its courtyards with the bodies of those you kill! Go!" So they went throughout the city and did as they were told." (Ezekiel 9:5-7)

And at midnight the LORD killed all the firstborn sons in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sat on the throne, to the firstborn son of the captive in the dungeon. Even the firstborn of their livestock were killed. Pharaoh and his officials and all the people of Egypt woke up during the night, and loud wailing was heard throughout the land of Egypt. There was not a single house where someone had not died. (Exodus 12:29-30)

God speaking:"Anyone who is captured will be run through with a sword. Their little children will be dashed to death right before their eyes. Their homes will be sacked and their wives raped by the attacking hordes. For I will stir up the Medes against Babylon, and no amount of silver or gold will buy them off. The attacking armies will shoot down the young people with arrows. They will have no mercy on helpless babies and will show no compassion for the children. (Isaiah 13:15-18)"

gut
08-06-2010, 01:46 AM
> Are you saying Jesus should have given his disciples a sponge bath?

I was saying that I didn't think cleanliness was a problem for the people he was around.

> I didn't say that she was in harmony with the law

Am I wrong? Female commited adultary, religious authorities wanted to kill said female,
jesus said no. That was just the first think that came to my mind when you were saying
that jesus believed in all the OT stuff. I think he contradicted much of it.

>> take a lot of creativity to transform 'treat neighbors as you would be treated' into 'hate women'

> It is entirely His fault if the words were misunderstood

Didn't say misunderstood. More like ignored. In each case of those words being ignored,
it turned out shameful for humanity. Maybe they aren't divine words, but they seem wise
enough to be. When I find a source of words so wise, maybe that's an indication to pay
attention to more of them.

> He also tells some of His follows to kill children.

You quoted stuff that wasn't in red.

> Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and
> teaches others to do the same will be called least in the
> kingdom of heaven

So the way you see it, it is wrong to be called 'least' in heaven
if you break commandments? Doesn't seem very severe to me. It
doesn't surprise me that jesus says he doesn't have a problem with
the commandments. I suppose I don't either, come to think of it.

If you are still saying that jesus was 100% supportive of all the
OT stuff, how do you explain my previous example?

JellySlayer
08-06-2010, 02:21 AM
> Are you saying Jesus should have given his disciples a sponge bath?

I was saying that I didn't think cleanliness was a problem for the people he was around.

Generally speaking, most practices that we would consider standard hygeine weren't developed till a few hundred years ago. Different cultures had bits and pieces, but even regular bathing was uncommon in many parts of the world.


> I didn't say that she was in harmony with the law

Am I wrong? Female commited adultary, religious authorities wanted to kill said female,
jesus said no. That was just the first think that came to my mind when you were saying
that jesus believed in all the OT stuff. I think he contradicted much of it.

Jesus didn't say no. He said "he who is without sin may cast the first stone".



Didn't say misunderstood. More like ignored. In each case of those words being ignored,
it turned out shameful for humanity. Maybe they aren't divine words, but they seem wise
enough to be. When I find a source of words so wise, maybe that's an indication to pay
attention to more of them.

Lots of people say wise things. Love your neighbour wasn't exactly revolutionary--Jesus is quoting the Old Testament there--it was actually picked up by pretty much every other major religion in the world independently of Christianity.

If you want wisdom though, I'd recommend Confucianism.


> He also tells some of His follows to kill children.

You quoted stuff that wasn't in red.

Jesus is the same being at the OT God. Two of those passages are quoting God directly. One is an account of what He did. Thus if God said them, Jesus did too.

garyd
08-06-2010, 03:16 AM
Sorry no none of the Gospels was written after one hundred AD. That is basically conjecture and badly done conjecture form the Jesus seminarians who prodce more nonsense than any other nominally christian group doing research at this time. The last of the Apostolic writings - Revelation - Appears to have been between 80 and 90AD. given Jesus execution actually seems to have occurred around 27AD. And John was in his 90's when he died This is well within Johns lifetime.

gut
08-06-2010, 03:56 AM
> Jesus didn't say no. He said "he who is without sin may cast the first stone".

Still, I believe he was in opposition to those who were interpreting the OT
literally. On a side note, that seems a rather eloquent way of handling the
situation. Not only did he save a life, he gave a guideline as to which humans
are qualified to enforce death penalties.

> Love your neighbour wasn't exactly revolutionary

Wasn't making the case that only god could speak wisdom. I was answering your
assertion that he neglected to tell us not to mistreat women and other peoples.

>>> He also tells some of His follows to kill children.
...
>>> "Show no mercy; have no pity! Kill them all ? old and young, girls and women"
>>> "And at midnight the LORD killed all the firstborn sons in the land of Egypt,"
>>> "have no mercy on helpless babies and will show no compassion for the children."

>> You quoted stuff that wasn't in red.

> Jesus is the same being at the OT God.

Wasn't questioning that. Was questioning your source. I think you have considered
the words of a few multi-centuries-dead, middle-eastern, middle-aged males
to be that of god, and I'm disagreeing with that. Which leads us back to:

>>>>> The problem then is this: how do you pick and choose which pieces of the
>>>>> Bible to keep?

>>>> I can't give guidelines. If it sounds unbelievable, don't believe it.

It seems entirely probable that words like "have no mercy on helpless babies"
and "the LORD killed all the firstborn sons in the land of Egypt" are the
words of ancient hate-filled leaders who want to justify their hate and/or
military endeavors, so they tell their people it is the the will (hatred)
of god against those peoples/lands.

Please note the difference in the words you quoted as opposed to the words/works
of jesus. You keep trying to make the case that jesus was 100% in favor of all
the OT stuff, like "Show no mercy; have no pity!" but if that is so, why not use
your own logic to evaluate it? Why didn't jesus go around preaching 'death to
Egyptian children' himself?

fazisi
08-06-2010, 03:56 AM
The God of the Old Testament is a bad ass. Sometimes I wish he was still around to kick everyone in the balls when needed.

JellySlayer
08-06-2010, 03:19 PM
Does my process of interpretation smack of 'arbitrarily picking'? The
process where I rank sentences in red like 'treat others well' more likely
the advice of god, and sentences in black like 'don't wear different types
of fabric' the advice of overbearing politicians? Seems like jesus did the
same. He lauded the value of some OT teachings, yet differed when it came
to executing someone for adultary.


You quoted stuff that wasn't in red.


Please note the difference in the words you quoted as opposed to the words/works
of jesus. You keep trying to make the case that jesus was 100% in favor of all
the OT stuff, like "Show no mercy; have no pity!" but if that is so, why not use
your own logic to evaluate it? Why didn't jesus go around preaching 'death to
Egyptian children' himself?

Okay, gut. Let's ignore all the pieces of the Bible that are in black text. Red is in, black is out. That means we get to ignore:

-God created the universe.
-Adam and Eve
-God blessed Abraham
-The Exodus
-The Ten Commandments
-That Israel is God's chosen people
-The works of David and Solomon
-That God will bring about the end of the world
-That a Messiah was prophecized
-Among others...

Of course, it's a good thing that we'll get to ignore the prophecies of the Messiah, since we'll also have to ignore:

-That Jesus was born of a virgin
-That he was baptized
-That his name is Jesus (I could be mistaken, but I don't recall him ever referring to himself in the third person)
-That he walked on water
-That he healed some people (a few he said "get up and be healed" or something to that effect, so they can still count)
-That he turned water into wine
-That he raised a man from the dead
-That he was the Son of God (Jesus refers to himself as the Son of Man)
-That he was betrayed by Judas
-That he was arrested
-That he was cruficied
-That the tomb was empty
-That he was raised from the dead
-That he ascended into Heaven
-And all the works of Paul and the disciples that follow, except for a few bits in Revelation

You know what, you're right. The black text is the part that causes all the problems. Red-text Christianity might be a workable philosophy.

gut
08-06-2010, 08:34 PM
:D

10 chars

garyd
08-08-2010, 12:55 AM
The reason the woman caught in an act of adultery was not stoned was that it would have been unlawful for her to be stoned as they had not brought the man along for the ride.

This was little more than a blatant attempt to catch Jesus out in an unlawful act for which they could then have stoned him...

Al-Khwarizmi
08-09-2010, 10:06 AM
What is the purpose of giving humans this purported "free will", if one misstep by any individual, sentences the entire race to eternal damnation? It's hard for me to fathom any reason for God to do so unless He wanted all of humanity to go to hell. Because that is the invariable end result of such a system. If He just wanted us to love and praise and adore Him forever, He damn well should have just made us that way, instead of making us fallable and then punishing for all eternity because of the very ability to fail that He programmed into us. I'm not arguing what the Bible says. I've read it. I'm just arguing that it's morally wrong.

It's even more contradictory than that, since God is supposed to be omniscient (I don't think this is written in the Bible, but at least Catholics and some flavours of Protestants that I know think that). So He supposedly *knew* in advance that Adam and Eve would bite the apple and there would be sin and wars and crimes and so on. So if He knew all that, why did He create us anyway? Why didn't He instead create a race of beings that are free but do not commit sins? And in case it's impossible that such a race does not exist, then what are we to blame for not being like that?

Silfir
08-09-2010, 02:36 PM
Because if we can't commit sins we are not free.

grobblewobble
08-09-2010, 02:56 PM
No one goes to hell for any one thing he's done. Hell is a species of lifetime acheivement award.

That's awkward for those who die at young age (especially babies).


Because if we can't commit sins we are not free.

Are we free in heaven? I assume we are. Then what happens if we commit a sin in heaven?

garyd
08-09-2010, 08:12 PM
Close Silfir very close.

Because Robots cannot love...

A slave can never trully love his master.

Silfir
08-09-2010, 08:21 PM
@grobblewobble: I'd imagine if you were the type to do that, you wouldn't end up in heaven to begin with.

It depends on what image of "heaven" or "hell" you follow. My favorite image was always that heaven and hell were essentially the same place, only if you were a bad guy you wouldn't like it there and if you were a decent person you would.

Anyway, Al-Khwarizmi was asking why God would give us free will and then punish us for doing the wrong thing. That's simply what comes with free will. There is no good choice without an evil choice to distinguish it from. (Nevermind that there's usually thousands of choices, most of which are not fully good or evil and of which many are square in the middle somewhere.)

@garyd: Are you saying that free will doesn't exist?

JellySlayer
08-09-2010, 08:50 PM
Anyway, Al-Khwarizmi was asking why God would give us free will and then punish us for doing the wrong thing. That's simply what comes with free will. There is no good choice without an evil choice to distinguish it from. (Nevermind that there's usually thousands of choices, most of which are not fully good or evil and of which many are square in the middle somewhere.)

Do you consider that you have free will to choose whether or not to pay your taxes? If the choice is "free", why do so many people always choose the same thing? Can a choice be free if it is coerced? And finally, how can we know, a priori, that one choice is definitely right and one is definitely wrong? Particularly given that some choices that are "wrong" by God's standards may in fact give positive results here on Earth.


@garyd: Are you saying that free will doesn't exist?

How would you be able to tell one way or the other?

Silfir
08-09-2010, 09:27 PM
Do you consider that you have free will to choose whether or not to pay your taxes? If the choice is "free", why do so many people always choose the same thing? Can a choice be free if it is coerced? And finally, how can we know, a priori, that one choice is definitely right and one is definitely wrong? Particularly given that some choices that are "wrong" by God's standards may in fact give positive results here on Earth.

Of course I can choose not to pay my taxes! Then I get fined, lose all the money I would have had to pay, and some more as a fine, or maybe I go to jail. Or maybe I don't get caught! Many people all over the world make the conscious choice not to pay their taxes and never get caught.

Can choice be free if it is coerced? That depends on what your definition of "coerced" is. Is the fact that there are consequences for your actions enough to make the choice unfree, or coerced? If yes, of course, no one would be capable of making any kind of choice except those with no consequences, however minor, which a) don't exist and b) would not hold any meaning.

Let's say my local McDonald's offers me a colored cup along with my McMenu thingamajig, but I can make a choice of six different colors. My favorite color is blue. Does this make me unfree in my choice? After all, only one choice gets me the optimal outcome - a blue cup - so clearly I have no choice at all.

Sorry, it just doesn't compute.


How would you be able to tell one way or the other?

I honestly did not understand what garyd was saying and was asking for a clarification of his position, but if you want to talk about whether free will exists or not here's my two cents:

I don't care if free will is an illusion. Because if it is, then it's not an illusion we can escape anyway.

grobblewobble
08-09-2010, 09:36 PM
@grobblewobble: I'd imagine if you were the type to do that, you wouldn't end up in heaven to begin with.

This is in direct contradiction with your earlier statement that the capability to sin is an inevitable consequence of free will. To repeat your earlier quote:


[in answer to the why did god created us capable of sin] Because if we can't commit sins we are not free.

Silfir
08-09-2010, 09:40 PM
I don't get it. Where's the contradiction?

When we are discussing heaven, we are discussing a big ol'd nothing and everything. No one knows about what comes after death. That is kind of the point. Your assumption that there would be free will in heaven is a baseless assumption. If you say that having free will is awesome and heaven should be awesome so heaven should have free will, nothing is said about what heaven will actually look like. I guess if there actually is free will in heaven it would be wired in such a way that there is no need to commit sins to get what you want. If you were still committing a sin in such perfect circumstances, then you would be a bad guy and not in heaven. But there are millions of other theories imaginable. Maybe there just aren't any sins in heaven, and all your choices boil down to what kind of awesome thing you want to have happen to you next. I have no idea. We are discussing a nothing and everything. Also I'm hungry.

JellySlayer
08-09-2010, 09:43 PM
Of course I can choose not to pay my taxes! Then I get fined, lose all the money I would have had to pay, and some more as a fine, or maybe I go to jail. Or maybe I don't get caught! Many people all over the world make the conscious choice not to pay their taxes and never get caught.

Let me be more specific. Suppose there is no marginal benefit for not paying: you always get caught, and the fine + jail time is always larger than the value of the taxes you would otherwise pay.


Let's say my local McDonald's offers me a colored cup along with my McMenu thingamajig, but I can make a choice of six different colors. My favorite color is blue. Does this make me unfree in my choice? After all, only one choice gets me the optimal outcome - a blue cup - so clearly I have no choice at all.

Let's say that if you didn't choose green, you would be tortured until you changed your mind. Still a free choice?

I'm not saying that if one choice is better than the others, then it is not free. I am saying that is someone else is forcing you to choose a particular way through violence or threats of violence, then that choice is not free. The actions of someone under duress are not a reliable indicator of what they want; they are a better indicator of what the person who is issuing the threats/violence wants.

grobblewobble
08-09-2010, 09:46 PM
We now have the following questions and answers:

Q: Why did god create us with the ability to sin?
A: Because otherwise we would not have a free will
Q: Then what happens if you commit a sin in heaven?
A: Those who would do such a thing do not go to heaven.

This means that those people who go to heaven are not capable of committing a sin, which means that they do not have a free will.

Or, if it is somehow possible to have a free will but never choose to commit a sin, the next question is why God did not create people who do not sin to begin with.

Silfir
08-09-2010, 11:04 PM
Let me be more specific. Suppose there is no marginal benefit for not paying: you always get caught, and the fine + jail time is always larger than the value of the taxes you would otherwise pay.

Let's say that if you didn't choose green, you would be tortured until you changed your mind. Still a free choice?

I'm not saying that if one choice is better than the others, then it is not free. I am saying that is someone else is forcing you to choose a particular way through violence or threats of violence, then that choice is not free. The actions of someone under duress are not a reliable indicator of what they want; they are a better indicator of what the person who is issuing the threats/violence wants.

That line of argument works if you assume (believe) that one single sin is enough to condemn you to eternity in hell.

Nobody believes that. If you ask religious people, they would tell you that you can still go to heaven if you commit sins, even non-trivial ones, provided you are sorry and they remain a minor picture in your overall conduct (i. e. the truly altruistic good you did). After all, humans are not perfect beings. If you were expected to have a squeaky clean spotless record then yes, you would not be free in your choice I guess. But again, nobody (in their right mind) believes that, so what is the point of arguing on that basis?

Silfir
08-09-2010, 11:43 PM
We now have the following questions and answers:

Q: Why did god create us with the ability to sin?
A: Because otherwise we would not have a free will
Q: Then what happens if you commit a sin in heaven?
A: Those who would do such a thing do not go to heaven.

This means that those people who go to heaven are not capable of committing a sin, which means that they do not have a free will.

Or, if it is somehow possible to have a free will but never choose to commit a sin, the next question is why God did not create people who do not sin to begin with.

Your line of reasoning assumes a certain kind of heaven - I think I said that already? Dunno.

The assumption I'm working under is that heaven is the kind of place in which you'd have to be basically evil to still even think of committing a sin. Heaven is supposed to be the reward for people who, despite being tempted to make the wrong but in some way beneficial choices, on the whole didn't give in to temptation, or did so under some kind of significant duress. Your premise is that if you committed a sin in your life, then you would commit more in heaven - why? What if heaven is awesome enough without sinning? Free food, free drinks, free entertainment, free and clean earthly delights... Frolicking, pool, rock concerts and so on and so forth? Maybe all your "free will" boils down to choosing what kind of awesome things to do next.

The assumption that free will exists in heaven is one you made though, not me - you have yet to point out the reasoning behind it. If you imagine heaven as a place that doesn't let you do evil, then the people who'd really hate it there are those wo enjoy doing evil - and suddenly you don't even need your traditional hell anymore: One guy's heaven is the other's hell. Which basically is my image of heaven and hell, if I do even have one.

Why would God create people capable of sinning? Probably because he wanted to create them with the free will to choose between good and evil. Why did he want to do that? Because he thought it was interesting I guess. Dunno. I am agnostic, you know?

JellySlayer
08-10-2010, 12:42 AM
That line of argument works if you assume (believe) that one single sin is enough to condemn you to eternity in hell.

This isn't strictly about heaven/hell. This is simply about coercive versus non-coercive choice. I was using very strong examples to make it clear what I mean when I say that simply having a choice about something is not the same as having a free choice about something.


Nobody believes that. If you ask religious people, they would tell you that you can still go to heaven if you commit sins, even non-trivial ones, provided you are sorry and they remain a minor picture in your overall conduct (i. e. the truly altruistic good you did).

That depends on exactly what religious group you're speaking to. Christians don't believe that good works alone are sufficient to get to heaven; many (protestant) Christians believe that good works are irrelevant to getting to heaven and that only your faith is Jesus is required, others believe that a combination of faith and good works are required. Depending on exactly what denomination you follow, other things, eg. baptism, may also be necessary for salvation. Most Christians do believe that a single sin is sufficient to get you to hell unless you have faith in Jesus; indeed thanks to the original sin doctrine, some believe that even if you die before you commit a sin, you are still sent to hell because you inherited sin from Adam.


After all, humans are not perfect beings. If you were expected to have a squeaky clean spotless record then yes, you would not be free in your choice I guess. But again, nobody (in their right mind) believes that, so what is the point of arguing on that basis?

Many Christians aren't in their right minds, obviously.

grobblewobble
08-10-2010, 12:59 AM
Christian belief (and some other belief systems as well) claim that God doesn't want us to do this or that. This is the thought I am rejecting. Because if God had not wanted us to do something, why would he create us with the ability to do it? If he likes good people, why would he create bad people and torture them?

Now the standard counterargument, which you also made, is that he needed to accept that some of us sin, because we otherwise would not have a free will. But this argument simply doesn't help. And that's what I've been trying to make clear in the posts above.

The argument implies that introducing a free will inevitably mean that some people can and will start doing things that God doesn't like. If that were true, it would still hold true in any kind of heaven as much as on earth (and this does not depend on the kind of heaven you have in mind). And if God attaches so much value to free will that he endow us with it, in spite of the fact that it will make some of us sin, then it makes no sense to claim that he would "reward" the people that he likes by sending them to a place where they no longer have it.


Your premise is that if you committed a sin in your life, then you would commit more in heaven - why?
No, I didn't say that. I said that if having a free will on earth implies that some people can and will sin, this implication also holds anywhere else, including in heaven.


What if heaven is awesome enough without sinning?
If such a place and people enjoying it are possible to exist, there's no reason to create earth first.


The assumption that free will exists in heaven is one you made though, not me - you have yet to point out the reasoning behind it.
Because if God doesn't attach enough value to free will to introduce it in heaven, there's no good reason why he would introduce it on earth, either.

gut
08-10-2010, 01:31 AM
I love so much the fact that I live in a time where people can have
phillosophical discussions with people who chose for themselves
names such as grobblewobble, JellySlayer, and gut.

grobblewobble
08-10-2010, 01:36 AM
Incidentally, I later found out that "grobble wobble" actually has a slang meaning. ("Hot chick shaking it.")

Gut also has a meaning: it is the abbreviation of Grand Unified Theory in physics.

No idea about the hidden meaning of "Silfir", though?

Silfir
08-10-2010, 11:22 AM
No, I didn't say that. I said that if having a free will on earth implies that some people can and will sin, this implication also holds anywhere else, including in heaven.

Why?


The argument implies that introducing a free will inevitably mean that some people can and will start doing things that God doesn't like.

You've got me.


If that were true, it would still hold true in any kind of heaven as much as on earth (and this does not depend on the kind of heaven you have in mind).

I'm completely lost here. Why? Where do you get this kind of information about what heaven is like? You have absolutely no knowledge what heaven is like (no one has), and still you use this non-existent knowledge to make some kind of point against the purpose of free will in the reality we can actually experience. Why would heaven have to allow for free will? It doesn't make sense to me. Which is what I've been trying to make clear in numerous posts. Never mind that I tried to give numerous examples of how heaven could work without contradicting free will in this reality.


No idea about the hidden meaning of "Silfir", though?

I invented the name "Sirfil" for a character in a story years ago, then misspelled it basically on the next page (and changed the original name to match). It appears there's a character in the "Slayers" series with a similar name, depending on transcription (German manga has her as "Sylfir" sometimes).

Apparently, though, there is something called SILFIR (http://www.survey.ntua.gr/hosted/eurosil/silfir_short.html).

grobblewobble
08-10-2010, 11:55 AM
I am not making any assumption on what heaven is like. Please bear with me as I explain my argument one more time.

>> The argument implies that introducing a free will inevitably mean that some people can and will start
>> doing things that God doesn't like.
>You've got me.

Ok, this is step 1. Now we have two possibilities:

A) The problem in step one also arises in heaven.

B) The problem in step one does, for some reason, not arise in heaven.

Suppose you are right and B is true. In that case, God could have easily avoided the problem in step 1. He simply could have made earth exactly like heaven. Since free will does not cause people to sin in heaven, it would then not cause them to sin on earth, either.

So it follows from B) that free will cannot be a valid reason why God created people who do things he doesn't like.

But if B) is not true, we end up with A).

Silfir
08-10-2010, 01:10 PM
What is this problem you speak of?

That people can commit sins? Sure God probably doesn't like that, but why would preventing sins from being committed be God's first priority? He wants people to have free will, first and foremost, at least on Earth, as far as I understand, because he thinks it worth it to give people the capability to do evil if it means you can also give them the capability to do good.

Why would he have to want the same for heaven? One part of why it's okay to have evil in this world is that if you were the victim of evil you can still have a totally rad afterlife (this is mostly the reason for religion to exist - to give people a sense of justice when it comes to the nasty things done to them in this life: "Once you die your willingness to do good over evil will be properly rewarded." For many, many people, this is a very comforting thought, which helps motivate them to do selfless and altruistic things).
Being vulnerable to other people's sinning in the afterlife too would work counter to the rad time in the afterlife.

Which is the reasoning for the heaven/hell divide - keeping the people who would do others harm separated from those who wouldn't. Again, if you just take away free will - the ability to commit evil as well as good (given that you have made your sacrifices during your lifetime if you were a good guy) - then you don't need to make heaven and hell separate places at all. And again, even if there is free will in heaven, heaven is supposed to be a place in which you could have everything you want without having to even consider sinning. If you're the type who will sin without a reason then you probably won't end up in heaven. I guess you could also theorize that you could sin in heaven, but there's no reason to, and those who would sin without reason wouldn't be in heaven in the first place, and if you do commit a sin in heaven (heavenly accounting error?) you may still end up in heaven. There's thousands upon thousands of imaginable heavens and hells.

JellySlayer
08-10-2010, 02:49 PM
What is this problem you speak of?

That people can commit sins? Sure God probably doesn't like that, but why would preventing sins from being committed be God's first priority?

Being vulnerable to other people's sinning in the afterlife too would work counter to the rad time in the afterlife.


If God considers free will more important than whether or not people sin, why would God give free will to life on Earth, which is transient, while denying it to beings that are in heaven, which is eternal?

Silfir
08-10-2010, 04:21 PM
Because he'd prefer to have good and evil be transient?

grobblewobble
08-10-2010, 04:22 PM
What is this problem you speak of?

That people can commit sins?

I should have stated that more clearly. The problem is that a good God who creates people and next sentences some of those people to eternal suffering needs to have a very, very good reason. Being good, surely he should try very hard to avoid having to throw his own creations into hell. So the fact that people can and will sin is not the worst problem in itself; it is mainly a problem because it causes those who sin to be sentenced to an extremely cruel fate. Or at least the ones who sin too much, or those who don't feel enough regret (or insert judgement of choice).

Now with this in mind, maybe my argument makes more sense? No matter what heaven looks like, it makes the "free will" justification look like a bad excuse for throwing your own creations into hell:

- If people in Heaven do not have a free will but they're still happy, did God really have to give us a free will an earth?
- If people in Heaven do have a free will but this does not cause them to sin, how come God wasn't able to create such a situation on earth?
- If people in Heaven do have a free will and it does cause them to sin, doesn't that mean they should all end up in hell, by all fairness?

fazisi
08-10-2010, 11:38 PM
This isn't strictly about heaven/hell. This is simply about coercive versus non-coercive choice. I was using very strong examples to make it clear what I mean when I say that simply having a choice about something is not the same as having a free choice about something.
If the threat of hell is so coercive, why do people continue to sin? Free will.


Christian belief (and some other belief systems as well) claim that God doesn't want us to do this or that. This is the thought I am rejecting. Because if God had not wanted us to do something, why would he create us with the ability to do it? If he likes good people, why would he create bad people and torture them?

Now the standard counterargument, which you also made, is that he needed to accept that some of us sin, because we otherwise would not have a free will. But this argument simply doesn't help. And that's what I've been trying to make clear in the posts above.

The argument implies that introducing a free will inevitably mean that some people can and will start doing things that God doesn't like. If that were true, it would still hold true in any kind of heaven as much as on earth (and this does not depend on the kind of heaven you have in mind). And if God attaches so much value to free will that he endow us with it, in spite of the fact that it will make some of us sin, then it makes no sense to claim that he would "reward" the people that he likes by sending them to a place where they no longer have it.
My mother doesn't want me to smoke cigarettes or marijuana or sit on my ass playing video games all day. Does this mean she should have aborted me because there was the risk that I might turn out to be a mass murderer some day or did she give me life because she had hope that I might be a good and loving son?

Just because some (or many) people aren't worthy of God's love, does this mean he should forsake those who are?

And no one on this forum knows what heaven is like so please do not make assumptions.


I am not making any assumption on what heaven is like. Please bear with me as I explain my argument one more time.

[God] simply could have made earth exactly like heaven. Since free will does not cause people to sin in heaven, it would then not cause them to sin on earth, either.
Done making assumptions about heaven yet?


I should have stated that more clearly. The problem is that a good God who creates people and next sentences some of those people to eternal suffering needs to have a very, very good reason. Being good, surely he should try very hard to avoid having to throw his own creations into hell. So the fact that people can and will sin is not the worst problem in itself; it is mainly a problem because it causes those who sin to be sentenced to an extremely cruel fate. Or at least the ones who sin too much, or those who don't feel enough regret (or insert judgement of choice).
God has good reason. He created humans and gave them free will. Humans then chose the have the knowledge of good and evil. This means that in human's natural state, there was no conception of what good and evil was, they just acted naturally in a way that was pleasing to God. But now they could choose to do things that were good and evil.

So humans started doing evil things and God was a little upset. We were all condemned to hell (which in my interpretation is a place without the presence of God). This is logical because even as a good person, do you want to have a bunch of assholes hanging out with you? Now, God is a good person so instead of just locking the door to his awesome pad (heaven), he sent out his son Jesus to give people a chance to get into it. I would presume letting his kid get killed by his own creation in an attempt "to avoid having to throw his own creations into hell" would be considered "trying very hard".

Is it a problem now that people still get tossed into hell?


Now with this in mind, maybe my argument makes more sense? No matter what heaven looks like, it makes the "free will" justification look like a bad excuse for throwing your own creations into hell:

- If people in Heaven do not have a free will but they're still happy, did God really have to give us a free will an earth?
- If people in Heaven do have a free will but this does not cause them to sin, how come God wasn't able to create such a situation on earth?
- If people in Heaven do have a free will and it does cause them to sin, doesn't that mean they should all end up in hell, by all fairness?
Q- Did God really have to give us a free will on earth?
A- Yes.

Q- How come God wasn't able to create a situation on earth where humans have free will but the inability to sin?
A- Because this would not be free will.

Q- Humans should all end up in hell, by all fairness.
A- While I didn't word it as a question, this is true. However, God is merciful.

JellySlayer
08-10-2010, 11:48 PM
If the threat of hell is so coercive, why do people continue to sin? Free will.

Because they have reasoned that God, heaven, and hell, do not exist. If you don't accept the existence of God, it hardly matters what He thinks.

If you accept the existence of the Christian God, it's hard to reasonably believe that anyone wouldn't also be forced to accept Christianity as a whole.


Q- How come God wasn't able to create a situation on earth where humans have free will but the inability to sin?
A- Because this would not be free will.

So you don't believe that you have free will in heaven.

grobblewobble
08-11-2010, 12:20 AM
Done making assumptions about heaven yet?
The part you quoted should be seen in the context of a longer thread of thought that starts as follows:

Heaven could be like A, B or like C. IF heaven would be like A, ..

I explained this best in my last post.

gut
08-11-2010, 02:21 AM
love how you all refer to god as a boy. wouldn't
an omnipotent being be above gender?

JellySlayer
08-11-2010, 04:17 AM
love how you all refer to god as a boy. wouldn't
an omnipotent being be above gender?

Christian God is considered male according to the Bible. Even Jesus calls Him Father.

grobblewobble
08-11-2010, 07:28 AM
I feel a bit awkward about that, too. It's just that saying "he, she or it" every time isn't any better.

fazisi
08-11-2010, 09:35 AM
Q- How come God wasn't able to create a situation on earth where humans have free will but the inability to sin?
A- Because this would not be free will.So you don't believe that you have free will in heaven.
I do believe that a person in heaven will have free will. That person will also have the ability to sin but will not because the natural action would be to do good.


The part you quoted should be seen in the context of a longer thread of thought that starts as follows:

Heaven could be like A, B or like C. IF heaven would be like A, ..

I explained this best in my last post.
I choose D.


love how you all refer to god as a boy. wouldn't
an omnipotent being be above gender?
It is because God has been refered to in the Bible in the terms of male because of the patriarchal culture of the writers. Therefore, this has associated all who learn of God from the Bible with the notion that he has a cock. In my personal beliefs, God has no gender. But since it is easier to communicate clearly by using masculine pronouns when refering to God, that's what I use.

gut
08-11-2010, 10:22 AM
> "he, she or it" every time isn't any better.

I have tried to conciously just use 'god' everytime.
Who needs pronouns?

You are all even using 'He' :D

grobblewobble
08-11-2010, 10:54 AM
My mother doesn't want me to smoke cigarettes or marijuana or sit on my ass playing video games all day.
No, but your parents didn't design you. They had very limited control over the type of person you would become. God designed us and is therefore responsible for our actions in a way that your parents are not.


I do believe that a person in heaven will have free will. That person will also have the ability to sin but will not because the natural action would be to do good.
I am tempted to say: stop making assumptions about heaven. :p

Ok, so you believe that it's possible for people in heaven to have a free will but for all eternity consistently choose not to sin. If such people exist, then why didn't God create only such people and put them in heaven?

Also, I find it hard to accept that the decision on whether you end up spending an infinitely long period in heaven or hell hinges on the choices you make in a short timespan, with some people dying before they even mature. If earth is supposed to be a testing ground, it isn't a very good one.


So humans started doing evil things and God was a little upset.
I guess this is where we differ. I find it hard to swallow that an omnipotent being designs creatures with a free will and then is surprised when it turns out they make the "wrong" choices.

edit:

You are all even using 'He'
Uhm.. Well you got to show Him a little respect, don't you?

Silfir
08-11-2010, 11:24 AM
God designed us and is therefore responsible for our actions in a way that your parents are not.

No. Part of what he did when he "designed us" (read: set the events into motion that would eventually lead to our existence) was he gave us free will. That means we are responsible for our own actions, in this existence.


I am tempted to say: stop making assumptions about heaven.

Good thing you didn't, because fazisi isn't making any. He's stating what he believes. The person who seemed to be fully convinced there must be free will in heaven wasn't fazisi.


Ok, so you believe that it's possible for people in heaven to have a free will but for all eternity consistently choose not to sin. If such people exist, then why didn't God create only such people and put them in heaven?

Because he thought the other way was more interesting? Where would the fun be in creating "perfect" beings? For all we know he did that for billions of years before he decided to set the big bang into motion or whatever he did. For all we know, we know nothing.


I find it hard to swallow that an omnipotent being designs creatures with a free will and then is surprised when it turns out they make the "wrong" choices.

Where does it say he is surprised?



As for the issue of gender: I reserve a special kind of loathing for gender-neutral pronouns such as "zhe" and "hir", and writing "he or she" every single time makes the whole thing even more unwieldy than it needs to be. So I go for "he".

JellySlayer
08-11-2010, 05:25 PM
Because he thought the other way was more interesting? Where would the fun be in creating "perfect" beings? For all we know he did that for billions of years before he decided to set the big bang into motion or whatever he did. For all we know, we know nothing.

I guess this kind of gets to the heart of the matter:

If we have no reliable knowledge of who God is or what His motivations for creating us are,
If we have no reliable knowledge of whether or not there are a heaven or a hell, how to get there, and whether it is worth going to either,
If we have no reliable knowledge to suggest that any god, let alone this particular God even exists...

Then why should we believe in Him? Why should we believe He exists? Why should we act in ways that might please Him, rather than in ways that will please ourselves, or please others that we care about? Wouldn't it be more sensible to adopt a posture of disbelief in lieu of better evidence?

Silfir
08-11-2010, 05:32 PM
Why indeed! Welcome to agnostic atheism.

JellySlayer
08-11-2010, 05:39 PM
Why indeed! Welcome to agnostic atheism.

There's something profoundly amusing about a group of atheists arguing over the existence of God, even occasionally using scripture as a resource ;)

garyd
08-11-2010, 10:19 PM
Wrong. in order for man to rebel against God the temptaion to do so must exist heaven is without temptation.

I've yet to understand why atheists among others almost always seem to make the erroneous assumption that heaven, hell, and earth are of necessity operating under the same physical laws whem in fact various textual clues within the Bible pretty much preclude the possibility.

How is it inconvenient for babies and those who die a little less young, grobble? Salvation in any case isn't a function of what you or I do but of whether God, for his own purposes, wrote your name in the book og life before he ever said let there be light. There are from a salvation point of vies two and only two classes of people in the world:

Those whom God created to demonstrate his justice and those whom God created to demonstrate his mercy.

Epythic
08-11-2010, 10:26 PM
JellySlayer, your logic falls apart when people claim that they "just know god exists" (or alternatively that "the sciences" inability to disprove the existence of god is proof enough that he exists). You can't really argue with them because they are immune to logic.

Oh and from the Simpsons:

Bart: Wow, cool, God is so in your face!
Homer: Yeah, He's my favorite fictional character.

grobblewobble
08-11-2010, 10:51 PM
How is it inconvenient for babies and those who die a little less young, grobble? Salvation in any case isn't a function of what you or I do but of whether God, for his own purposes, wrote your name in the book og life before he ever said let there be light. There are from a salvation point of vies two and only two classes of people in the world:

Those whom God created to demonstrate his justice and those whom God created to demonstrate his mercy.

So whether you end up in heaven or in hell is not even based on what you do? God created some people with the purpose of showing his "justice" by torturing them "for his own purposes"?

If you sincerely believe that I am lost for words, sorry. I think I'll side with the devil if you are right. Or the catwoman.

gut
08-12-2010, 12:00 AM
> Why should we believe He exists?

we here

fazisi
08-12-2010, 03:36 AM
Ok, so you believe that it's possible for people in heaven to have a free will but for all eternity consistently choose not to sin. If such people exist, then why didn't God create only such people and put them in heaven?
I believe human kind will return to our natural state of action as Adam and Eve were in the garden of Eden before they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We will still have this knowledge from our time spent on earth but we will be reunited with God in a way that we never have been since gaining this knowledge. When we are back in the presence of God in this way, we will naturally act--freely choose--in ways that are good.


I've yet to understand why atheists among others almost always seem to make the erroneous assumption that heaven, hell, and earth are of necessity operating under the same physical laws whem in fact various textual clues within the Bible pretty much preclude the possibility.
Because the human mind only operates in an act of comparison. Most basic of this is the comparison of actual things, concepts, ideas, actions, or whatever to symbols or words. If the human mind cannot comprehend heaven, hell or earth, it just draws the closest assumption possible that it can rationalize. This isn't a fault of atheists alone but arguably the source of all human religion.

Al-Khwarizmi
08-12-2010, 10:07 AM
Done making assumptions about heaven yet?
He's not making assumptions about heaven, he's making an exhaustive case analysis. "Heaven is either A or not A. If it is A, then so-and-so. If it is not A, then it can be B or not B. If it is B..." In my opinion his reasoning is sound.


So humans started doing evil things and God was a little upset.
Why? He is supposed to be omniscient, so He already knew they would do that. So why be upset then?

In fact, omniscience negates free will. If there is an omniscient being who knows that I'm going to move my right arm in ten seconds, then I don't have much choice about moving my arm or not, right?

So I think it is contradictory to defend at the same time that God is omniscient and that God gave us free will, like most Christianity does.


Now, God is a good person so instead of just locking the door to his awesome pad (heaven), he sent out his son Jesus to give people a chance to get into it. I would presume letting his kid get killed by his own creation in an attempt "to avoid having to throw his own creations into hell" would be considered "trying very hard".
Then why did He send Jesus only to a particular place on Earth where He would influence a small part of humanity? Didn't the Chinese deserve to get that chance to go to Heaven just like the Romans? How about the Africans, the pre-Columbian Americans, etc.?

If God is omnipotent, one would think that the fair thing to do would be sending messengers everywhere to give everyone a fair chance. Even today, people born in many parts of the world don't have access to the Christian doctrine at all, while other people do, that seems quite unfair.

Silfir
08-12-2010, 11:23 AM
The trouble with grobblewobble's "exhaustive" case analysis is that it completely hinges on heaven or hell, or God's intentions, being a certain way - basically it limits itself to possibilities A and B where there are many, many more, and is thus anything but exhaustive. Thats what makes it wobbly. But who am I to continue to grobble about such things?

(I am a bad person.)


If God is omnipotent, one would think that the fair thing to do would be sending messengers everywhere to give everyone a fair chance. Even today, people born in many parts of the world don't have access to the Christian doctrine at all, while other people do, that seems quite unfair.

Because Jesus is human (mostly). The only alternative would be to father multiple Jesuses. As far as I'm aware, being a heathen - i. e. not aware of the teachings of Christianity - counts as a mitigating circumstance, and if you still did good you would still get to go to heaven (and of course there are other, more restrictive views out there, I wouldn't want to believe those either). And this is also why missionaries were sent out into the world; to grant more and more people access to these teachings.

grobblewobble
08-12-2010, 12:13 PM
The trouble with grobblewobble's "exhaustive" case analysis is that it completely hinges on heaven or hell, or God's intentions, being a certain way - basically it limits itself to possibilities A and B where there are many, many more, and is thus anything but exhaustive. Thats what makes it wobbly. But who am I to continue to grobble about such things?

You are Silfir, that is who you are. By all means, feel free to point out contradictions in my wobbly thinking.

Surely, I've got to admit that I did make assumptions. I have certain views of what Christianity entails, so if I try to explain why the kind of Christianity that I have in mind is not acceptable to me, I first have to assume that this is indeed what Christianity is.

So please, what is precisely the faulty assumption I am making? For sake of clarity, here are the "options" I allowed for:



- If people in Heaven do not have a free will but they're still happy, ..
- If people in Heaven do have a free will but this does not cause them to sin, ..
- If people in Heaven do have a free will and it does cause them to sin, ..


Reading back, the first missing option I notice is "people in Heaven do not have a free will and they're not happy". I must have missed some other options, too.



(I am a bad person.)

You naughty boy. ;)

To Fasizi: it seems that what you believe is quite close to my view.

Al-Khwarizmi
08-12-2010, 12:40 PM
The trouble with grobblewobble's "exhaustive" case analysis is that it completely hinges on heaven or hell, or God's intentions, being a certain way - basically it limits itself to possibilities A and B where there are many, many more, and is thus anything but exhaustive.

If you divide the space of possibilities into "A" and "not A", you are being exhaustive, because A must be either true or false, and therefore it is always the case that either A or not A (law of the excluded middle).

The exception would be if you are speaking about something which is gradual, like "John is tall", where you can have a middle ground between true and false (1.95 should probably be considered tall, 1.50 not tall, but 1.75 or 1.80 is doubtful). There you would use fuzzy logic or something similar where you don't have the law of the excluded middle. But in this case, it seems that the the propositions "people have free will" and "people are able to commit sins" do not allow for middle ground (either one has free will or hasn't, etc.) so this problem does not arise.

Silfir
08-12-2010, 01:55 PM
- If people in Heaven do not have a free will but they're still happy, did God really have to give us a free will an earth?

Arguably, God doesn't "have" to do anything. Maybe the "free will experiment" is more important to him? Less boring? Maybe he thinks, whatever the cost, the experience of a life with individual decisions - free will - is worth it on the whole, even if it means some people go down the wrong path.


- If people in Heaven do have a free will but this does not cause them to sin, how come God wasn't able to create such a situation on earth?

Because on earth there are people who are dicks thanks to their free will. The dicks go to hell. The non-dicks go to heaven. Therefore, the people in heaven are non-dicks.

The moment we were granted free will, God ceases to interfere with our actions. Whether he can't (limits of omnipotence) or won't is not really all that important. The important part would be that from this point on we have the choice to do good or bad.


- If people in Heaven do have a free will and it does cause them to sin, doesn't that mean they should all end up in hell, by all fairness?

Considering the people in heaven are non-dicks, if they do commit sins (why would they?) they are probably not all that bad.



I don't think anything I wrote above is particularly new. My point is that there are assumptions littered throughout about what God would have to be or God would have to want that are not really consistent with my image of Christianity. That, I guess, might be the underlying cause for dissent - we're having a theological debate, only you're assuming a certain view of Christianity to try and argue against Christianity as a whole (which is not going to work, given 2.1 billion Christians around the world, with almost as many quite distinct views), while I'm merely trying to promote my own (also: fazisi's, sort of?) view of Christianity and demonstrate that it's perfectly okay to believe in that.

JellySlayer
08-12-2010, 04:21 PM
Arguably, God doesn't "have" to do anything. Maybe the "free will experiment" is more important to him? Less boring? Maybe he thinks, whatever the cost, the experience of a life with individual decisions - free will - is worth it on the whole, even if it means some people go down the wrong path.

If free will is so important, what sense is there to punish people for exercising it?


Because on earth there are people who are dicks thanks to their free will. The dicks go to hell. The non-dicks go to heaven. Therefore, the people in heaven are non-dicks.

The moment we were granted free will, God ceases to interfere with our actions. Whether he can't (limits of omnipotence) or won't is not really all that important. The important part would be that from this point on we have the choice to do good or bad.

God doesn't separate people by "dicks" and "non-dicks". He separates them into "believers" and "non-believers". There are definitely some believers who are dicks, and definitely some non-belivers who are not dicks.


Considering the people in heaven are non-dicks, if they do commit sins (why would they?) they are probably not all that bad.

Because Christianity does not require you not to be a dick. It requires you to believe in Jesus. I'd go so far as to argue that the single core belief that defines all of Christianity is that good works alone are not sufficient to get into heaven, but rather than belief in Jesus (with or without good works, depending on your choice of Christianity) is the most important prerequisite.


I believe human kind will return to our natural state of action as Adam and Eve were in the garden of Eden before they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We will still have this knowledge from our time spent on earth but we will be reunited with God in a way that we never have been since gaining this knowledge. When we are back in the presence of God in this way, we will naturally act--freely choose--in ways that are good.

A system where people have the choice between A and B but always choose B is indistinguishable from a system where people have no choice at all. If people have free will in heaven, some of them must choose ways that are not good. Otherwise, they do not have free will in any meaningful sense.

Silfir
08-12-2010, 04:25 PM
@JellySlayer: In that case we have a fundamentally different understanding of Christianity, I'm afraid :)

gut
08-12-2010, 05:16 PM
> Considering the people in heaven are non-dicks, if they do commit sins (why would they?)
> they are probably not all that bad

wasn't satan once there?

JellySlayer
08-12-2010, 05:25 PM
> Considering the people in heaven are non-dicks, if they do commit sins (why would they?)
> they are probably not all that bad

wasn't satan once there?

Maybe, but that's in black text.

According to the book of Job, though, Satan makes regular visits.

fazisi
08-12-2010, 08:13 PM
Why? He is supposed to be omniscient, so He already knew they would do that. So why be upset then?

In fact, omniscience negates free will. If there is an omniscient being who knows that I'm going to move my right arm in ten seconds, then I don't have much choice about moving my arm or not, right?

So I think it is contradictory to defend at the same time that God is omniscient and that God gave us free will, like most Christianity does.
How does someone knowing what you will choose to do affect your ability to choose? This makes no sense.


Then why did He send Jesus only to a particular place on Earth where He would influence a small part of humanity? Didn't the Chinese deserve to get that chance to go to Heaven just like the Romans? How about the Africans, the pre-Columbian Americans, etc.?
This is why one of Jesus' commands to his apostles was to spread the word to all the nations.


To Fasizi: it seems that what you believe is quite close to my view.
I said something similar to Silfir several pages ago.


I'm merely trying to promote my own (also: fazisi's, sort of?) view of Christianity and demonstrate that it's perfectly okay to believe in that.
I am mostly just trying to argue for the sake of arguing. I also like the idea of letting others know my twisted thoughts of Christianity/Catholicism. If enough of you are willing to give 10% of your income to me, I just might even start a church.


A system where people have the choice between A and B but always choose B is indistinguishable from a system where people have no choice at all. If people have free will in heaven, some of them must choose ways that are not good. Otherwise, they do not have free will in any meaningful sense.
I see it more as a choice between A1, A2, A3, B1, B2, and B3 where all the people in heaven will choose from A1, A2, or A3. Still not free will? Then I guess there is no free will in heaven in the way I imagine this fairytale land to be.

grobblewobble
08-12-2010, 09:43 PM
I believe human kind will return to our natural state of action as Adam and Eve were in the garden of Eden before they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We will still have this knowledge from our time spent on earth but we will be reunited with God in a way that we never have been since gaining this knowledge. When we are back in the presence of God in this way, we will naturally act--freely choose--in ways that are good.

There is a lot on which we differ, but this is a specific part on which I could "almost" agree (though I still perceive things a bit different). In any case, it seems a lot more reasonable than "if you screw up during your short life on earth you will burn in the pits for all eternitity, with no second chances whatsoever". You also said your perception of God was a bit similar to mine.

Hey, how about this. Why don't you and I start a sect? ;) I propose that we replace the old-fashioned word "God" by "Catwoman" and make it the sect of catworship. Or maybe the sect of cats and dogs (otherwise Gut will never join). But no mass suicides, please (I hate cleaning up the mess after mass suicides).

gut
08-12-2010, 10:29 PM
if there are no dogs in heaven, I don't wanna go

fazisi
08-13-2010, 01:25 AM
To be honest, all this heaven and hell debating I've been doing is really for the sake of argument. I personally don't have any concept for what an afterlife, if any, would be like. I'll give you a better answer when I am dead.

Don't worry gut, you can spend the rest of eternity with all the dogs that Grey has maliciously slaughtered.

garyd
08-13-2010, 03:11 AM
People sin against God in this life because they are not omnipotent omniscient and omnipresent or they'd know that to sin against God would is rather pointlessly suicidal. Sin is selfishness That is we set out to do what we think is in our own best interest but because we are none of the three "O" s we often don't really have any idea what that is.

People in heaven do not sin because they choose not to rather they don't sin because the option is no longer available because at long last we really do know better.

People in hell are still in a state of rebellion against God and will remain so for all eternity because the option is availble and they don't know better.

Oh and what Part of go ye therefore unto all nations preaching and baptizing ... did you not get. If God doesn't act we all go to hell.

People who claim that you can have morality and not have God are missing the point. If there is a God and he has ordered this universe to suit himself then his notion of Morality would permeate this universe and while member of the cration may not recognize the creator they would still behave to a certain extent after the moral code he established and think it was them being good occasionally

gut
08-13-2010, 03:20 AM
> People in heaven do not sin because

but the angels, I hear tell they do

> People in hell are still in a state of rebellion

no, they are in the state of KY

JellySlayer
08-13-2010, 05:48 AM
Thanks garyd, for doing such a great job illustrating the points that I've been trying to make.

[edit]I would encourage you to go out and meet some atheists one of these days though. You might be surprised that they're mostly really nice, moral people.

gut
08-13-2010, 06:09 AM
if I didn't fear god and the law, I would kill everyone I ever wanted to

littlebrather
08-13-2010, 08:42 AM
> I would kill everyone
Mr Dostoyevsky had written a novel about this named Crime and Punishment
And the main idea there AFAR - conscience is your own and the most strict judge.

gut
08-13-2010, 11:03 AM
my conscience would bother me if I killed someone
who didn't deserve it, but why would I want to kill
them anyway

JellySlayer
08-13-2010, 03:10 PM
if I didn't fear god and the law, I would kill everyone I ever wanted to

You should seek psychiatric help.

littlebrather
08-13-2010, 04:01 PM
my conscience would bother me if I killed someone
who didn't deserve itNo. U will suffer anyway - its your deep old instincts and they can make you crazy. Soldiers, whose conscience should be pure by mean of conventional logic, have a huge psychological problems after they war is gone.

Epythic
08-13-2010, 07:17 PM
if there are no dogs in heaven, I don't wanna go
So what? You wouldn't get there anyway. ;)


People who claim that you can have morality and not have God are missing the point. If there is a God and he has ordered this universe to suit himself then his notion of Morality would permeate this universe and while member of the cration may not recognize the creator they would still behave to a certain extent after the moral code he established and think it was them being good occasionally
OTOH, what if there truly was no god and people just realized that all in all it's good to have morality (in the long term)? That morality exists doesn't mean that god exists.


You should seek psychiatric help.
How's that news?


No. U will suffer anyway - its your deep old instincts and they can make you crazy. Soldiers, whose conscience should be pure by mean of conventional logic, have a huge psychological problems after they war is gone.
Conventional logic? You know, maybe they started to question the war, but by the time they did so were unable to do anything about it? Maybe they think that what they are doing is unjust, but feel that they have to do it anyway? Not sure what that has to do with instincts.
Or something else. Don't use soldiers please for your religious ramblings.


Also note that I don't say god doesn't exist. I just *believe* that he doesn't exist, mostly because of this:
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/the_data_so_far.png

EDIT: Oh and yay, this thread is growing to epic proportions.

Silfir
08-13-2010, 07:37 PM
If you can confirm a power by experiment, it's not a supernatural power anymore ;)

gut
08-13-2010, 11:16 PM
> You should seek psychiatric help.

Indeed, I'd definitely seek THEM out first

> U will suffer anyway - its your deep old instincts and they can make you crazy.

Maybe we have different insticts. Maybe we just nurture them
differently. If you have such problems with killing humanoids,
I'd suggest starting with something small and non-mammal.
Fishies are great, as they can't even wince. Next, move up to
small mammals such as squirels, then procede to slaying deer
or some other large mammal with big round eyes. Don't worry,
as all that is legal. I'd recommend shooting the corpses a few
times after they are dead for further desensitization. Only
when you can cheerfully slay pandas or other endangered species
at the zoo should you try humanoids.

fazisi
08-14-2010, 01:02 AM
Epythic, I don't think xkcd is a valid proof for an argument.

littlebrather
08-14-2010, 05:55 AM
> Don't use soldiers please for your religious ramblings
No religion at all - only pure reasonings

> Maybe we have different instincts
As stupid 'House MD' says - having differ from conventional instincts is a kind of disaster. To lie to steal and to kill is so unusual to human nature, that doing it makes Ur heart beat faster and Ur palms sweat. Polygraph and some methods of interrogation exist and work. And there are not only moral (religion, law) norms, that makes Ur feel ill. Then U see a crying baby on the snow, U will save him, no matter how much U are afraid of humans. Then U commit a crime U will think about it again and again, just because it's an unusual experience to U. And while U R thinking Ur instincts will take the control, and make U suffer.

gut
08-14-2010, 07:18 AM
> to kill is so unusual to human nature, that doing it
> makes Ur heart beat faster and Ur palms sweat

not after the first few times

> Then U see a crying baby on the snow, U will save him

of course I would, freezing makes it chewy

> it's an unusual experience to U

sure

littlebrather
08-14-2010, 09:20 AM
> not after the first few times
anal sex is also painful only first few times...

gut
08-14-2010, 10:02 AM
not for a corpse

grobblewobble
08-14-2010, 11:59 AM
Let's toss in some more spam to keep the flamewar going.

The idea that the exact sciences can explain everything reminds me a bit of this image.

http://www.bestcollegesonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/escher1.jpg

We didn't know much before we started doing science and we still don't know much now..

Epythic
08-14-2010, 12:52 PM
Epythic, I don't think xkcd is a valid proof for an argument.
No but it conveys my argument in a fairly understandable way, I think.


> Don't use soldiers please for your religious ramblings
No religion at all - only pure reasonings
Pure reasonings? May I see some sources now, please? Because all that stuff you said is not pure logic. It might be true, but to believe that I'd like to see some data first.

> Maybe we have different instincts

As stupid 'House MD' says - having differ from conventional instincts is a kind of disaster. To lie to steal and to kill is so unusual to human nature, that doing it makes Ur heart beat faster and Ur palms sweat. Polygraph and some methods of interrogation exist and work. And there are not only moral (religion, law) norms, that makes Ur feel ill. Then U see a crying baby on the snow, U will save him, no matter how much U are afraid of humans. Then U commit a crime U will think about it again and again, just because it's an unusual experience to U. And while U R thinking Ur instincts will take the control, and make U suffer.
Different instincts are a disaster? Not so sure. Why shouldnt they be beneficial?
Lying/... is unusual to human nature? I think you are confusing human nature with what you have been thought from early on. Its trained, and I bet it can be trained away too. (Only slightly related, heres a very very good book (http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Delta-Force-Eric-Haney/dp/038573252X/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1281786280&sr=1-3) (non-fictional). Seriously; I read it and it is very well written.)
Committing a crime can have very serious consequences. It's only natural to think about things that can affect your life in very significant ways. OTOH, if you for example write a masters thesis you will likely think a lot about it around submission time.
And again @lying: its not a trivial thing, sure, because after a lie you now have to remember and keep apart *two* versions of "reality". And usually if you make a mistake something bad happens. Doesnt mean that you cant train lying.
I just dont see what it has to do with human nature.


We didn't know much before we started doing science and we still don't know much now..
No, but "science" basically means "make as few assumptions you can't prove as possible".
The existence of a god seems like a pretty big assumption to me.
But even if we assumed that there was a god -- all that stuff that is, for example, in the bible makes for a lot of even bigger assumptions.


And I am too lazy again to errorcheck my post.

grobblewobble
08-14-2010, 01:19 PM
The first quote is not from me, but from littlebrather.

> No, but "science" basically means "make as few assumptions you can't prove as possible".
Ok, but that's not the only difference. The exact sciences are mainly concerned with accurate description of what and when and how, rather than why. It does not try to address questions like:

- what are we here for?
- what should we do?
- why is there suffering?

..etc

Religion, on the other hand, is primarily about these questions. I'd say that whether or not there is a God is not even the most important question in religion, the questions above are more important.

Philosophy touches the borderline between science and religion. Mathematics is an interesting case since it deals with stuff that does not exist (eg, numbers). At least I've never seen a number in everyday life. Well, I did sometimes see three oranges for example, but you still need to divide that by orange to get three.

All of this is not to say that I think we should believe the bible.

Adom
08-14-2010, 09:15 PM
I am a creationist and I like to have sex with animals.

Epythic
08-15-2010, 12:04 AM
I am a creationist and I like to have sex with animals.
I don't see a problem there - humans are animals too (although some dispute this).

But let's say you liked having sex with non-human animals (who knows? it's the adom forums after all), what does this have to do with creationism? Since theres no way (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproductive_isolation) you two (?) can produce viable offspring I do not see how this has anything to do with creationism/evolutionism.

EDIT: I'm not sure if what I said makes the slightest sense. It's past 1AM and I don't feel like thinking right now.


The first quote is not from me, but from littlebrather.

> No, but "science" basically means "make as few assumptions you can't prove as possible".
Ok, but that's not the only difference. The exact sciences are mainly concerned with accurate description of what and when and how, rather than why. It does not try to address questions like:

- what are we here for?
- what should we do?
- why is there suffering?

..etc

Religion, on the other hand, is primarily about these questions. I'd say that whether or not there is a God is not even the most important question in religion, the questions above are more important.

Philosophy touches the borderline between science and religion. Mathematics is an interesting case since it deals with stuff that does not exist (eg, numbers). At least I've never seen a number in everyday life. Well, I did sometimes see three oranges for example, but you still need to divide that by orange to get three.

All of this is not to say that I think we should believe the bible.
Or "how did we get here"?

Religion: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And I am telling you, he told me, so it must be true."
Science: well we don't know for sure how exactly the universe began, we have this theory which seems plausible because of 1./2./3....




Edit: Or "why is this my 700th post?" Or "why does it matter?"
[Note: the last question is the religious version. The sciency question would be "does it matter?", because clearly it doesn't.]

garyd
08-15-2010, 01:01 AM
Why is it you think I don't know any atheists? I've known scores. I once was one as far as that goes. And again if thier is a God then one wouod expect that said God's notion of morality would permeate the universe he created.

Religion - God did it through means we can not at this point in time fully comprehend.

Science - We do not know how the universe came to be but these are some possibilities.

Atheist - We don't know how the universe came to be but it just couldn't have been God. because we don't want it to be.

JellySlayer
08-15-2010, 01:37 AM
Why is it you think I don't know any atheists? I've known scores. I once was one as far as that goes. And again if thier is a God then one wouod expect that said God's notion of morality would permeate the universe he created.

As I've illustrated earlier in the thread, God's notion of morality is pretty twisted. His morality clearly doesn't permeate the universe all that well, because He apparently had to destroy all of mankind with a flood because He didn't like the way we're behaving.

Different cultures have different moralities. Many of them are not remotely consistent with Judeo-Christian belief systems. The stuff that everyone does agree on can be plausibly explained by evolutionary theory without invoking the need for a source of morality.



Religion - God did it through means we can not at this point in time fully comprehend.

Science - We do not know how the universe came to be but these are some possibilities.

Atheist - We don't know how the universe came to be but it just couldn't have been God. because we don't want it to be.

Religion - We have no proof God exists, but we believe it anyway.

Science - We have no interest in God because we can't measure Him or anything that He's ever done.

Atheist - We have no proof God exists, and thus choose not to believe it.

Epythic
08-15-2010, 02:19 AM
He apparently had to destroy all of mankind with a flood because He didn't like the way we're behaving.

So God's a mass murderer!
Now that I think of it... actually fits pretty well.

Will anyone please think of the children and forbid such literature (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible) of unparalleled violence?

gut
08-15-2010, 03:17 AM
> I like to have sex with animals

the real fun begins when animals force sex on humans

> Science: well we don't know for sure

if scientists actually talked like that, I'd take them more seriously

Silfir
08-15-2010, 02:05 PM
Atheist - We have no proof God exists, and thus choose not to believe it.

That is agnostic atheism. Atheism doesn't have to be agnostic. I suspect garyd might have had to deal with scores of very non-agnostic atheists, i. e. those who believe that there is proof against the existence of a God. Whether atheist or theist, no one likes people presenting their opinions or beliefs as facts, then shoving them down other's throats.

A link related to the topic at hand: 10 Things Christians and Atheists Can (And Must) Agree On (http://www.cracked.com/article_15759_10-things-christians-atheists-can-and-must-agree-on.html)

gut
08-15-2010, 02:43 PM
followed that link, disagreed with this

> 5. Your Point of View is Legitimately Offensive to Them

Epythic
08-15-2010, 07:46 PM
followed that link, disagreed with this

> 5. Your Point of View is Legitimately Offensive to Them

True. I mean, god either exists or he doesn't, one way or another, one of us (them) is wrong.

Also:

> 3. In Everyday Life, You're Not That Different.
Not everyone, no, but some religious folks are very much unlike me. I think I mentioned it somewhere in an earlier post, some man recently spammed me and other people in front of a shopping center. I'd never do that. So thats an extreme difference right there.

> When your tooth hurts, you don't assume it's possessed by demons.
Today now. Some hundred years earlier? Not that unlikely.

> 4. There Are Good People on Both Sides
What an irrelevant point. Its about right and wrong, not good and bad.

> 8. Focusing on Negative Examples Makes You Stupid
Focusing on positive examples will generall not help your cause either.
"Religion is bad because they say they

> 9. Both Sides Have Brought Good to the Table
I'd say atheists have likely brought less bad things to the table. Think crusades.

Silfir
08-15-2010, 08:41 PM
> 3. In Everyday Life, You're Not That Different.
Not everyone, no, but some religious folks are very much unlike me. I think I mentioned it somewhere in an earlier post, some man recently spammed me and other people in front of a shopping center. I'd never do that. So thats an extreme difference right there.

> 8. Focusing on Negative Examples Makes You Stupid


> 4. There Are Good People on Both Sides
What an irrelevant point. Its about right and wrong, not good and bad.

You can't find out who is "right" and who is "wrong" - so this aspect is about the most irrelevant ever when it comes to the very relevant issue of the clash between atheism vs. christianity and why it doesn't need to be quite as full of "I'm right, you're an idiot" as it often ends up. Though I guess in the end it's up to anyone whether they're going to try and be a know-it-all douchebag. I know I'm one a lot of the time.


Focusing on positive examples will generall not help your cause either.

Um. Yes, I guess? What does that have to do with anything? What is this "cause" you speak of?


> 9. Both Sides Have Brought Good to the Table
I'd say atheists have likely brought less bad things to the table. Think crusades.

... You did read the article, right?

grobblewobble
08-15-2010, 11:49 PM
I mean, god either exists or he doesn't, one way or another, one of us (them) is wrong.


Or both. Maybe some kind of God does exist, but he is totally different than anyone has imagined.

More specifically, remember that about 100 years ago, scientists thought that they basically understood everything and only needed to figure out some more details to complete the picture. In the decades that followed, two entirely new fields were discovered (relativity and quantum mechanics). To this date, we still don't have a theory of physics that is both complete and consistent.

"There is more between heaven and earth, horatio, than is dreamt of in your philosophy." In the light of the above, I see this as quite a reasonable position.


Though I guess in the end it's up to anyone whether they're going to try and be a know-it-all douchebag.

:o

JellySlayer
08-15-2010, 11:52 PM
A link related to the topic at hand: 10 Things Christians and Atheists Can (And Must) Agree On (http://www.cracked.com/article_15759_10-things-christians-atheists-can-and-must-agree-on.html)

I disagree with points:

"1. You Can Do Terrible Things in the Name of Either One"

There has never been anyone doing terrible things in the name of atheism. There have been atheists who have done terrible things, but that's not the same thing. Hitler was a vegetarian, but we don't say he committed genocide in the name of vegetarianism, nor do we say vegetarianism is evil simply because he was one. There have been religious folk of various stripes who have done terrible things in the name of religion.

"3. In Everyday Life, You're Not That Different"

To me, this is a problem for religious folk. They ought to be. The author also doesn't seem to understand that morality can and did evolve.

"8. Focusing on Negative Examples Makes You Stupid"

Disagree. The negatives examples are the important ones. The people that sit around minding their own business aren't the ones who aren't important in the grand scheme of things. Radicals are the ones that cause problems because they're the ones who might decide that blowing up a building in the name of their god is a good idea.

"9. Both Sides Have Brought Good to the Table"

Difficult to argue without the benefit of hindsight. His argument that religion is necessary for morality is false, however. There are philosophies and legal systems that work just fine without the need for reference to a creator.

Didn't see #10...

garyd
08-15-2010, 11:58 PM
In the name of stamping out Religion the Communists in Russian and China under Mao and others systematically murdered millions dwarfing the totals of virtually every religion in the world combined including Islam.

No atheist charities exist save for the promulgation of atheism.

Atheists in my experience do every bit as much proselytizing if not more than most Christians.

grobblewobble
08-16-2010, 12:17 AM
"1. You Can Do Terrible Things in the Name of Either One"

There has never been anyone doing terrible things in the name of atheism. There have been atheists who have done terrible things, but that's not the same thing. Hitler was a vegetarian, but we don't say he committed genocide in the name of vegetarianism, nor do we say vegetarianism is evil simply because he was one. There have been religious folk of various stripes who have done terrible things in the name of religion.

You can reverse that argument and say that no one has done a lot of good in the name of atheism, either. There have been great atheists doing wonderful things, but they didn't say they did it because they were atheist.

How about this: "1. Both atheists and religious folk can do terrible things."

fazisi
08-16-2010, 12:54 AM
"8. Focusing on Negative Examples Makes You Stupid"

Disagree. The negatives examples are the important ones. The people that sit around minding their own business aren't the ones who aren't important in the grand scheme of things. Radicals are the ones that cause problems because they're the ones who might decide that blowing up a building in the name of their god is a good idea.
The negative examples are just as important as the positive examples and even the inbetween examples. By assigning importance to one group does make you stupid. It narrows perspective.

Radicals can be both the negatives or the positives. The more common ones are all the ones in the middle. One might assume only the radicals are the important ones because they commit the most spectacular acts, but quantity beats quality any day of the week. Luckily for these radicals, the common members all seem to follow their instructions. So while all the attention is on the radicals, you have to remember that it is the efforts of the many that bring around results.

Silfir
08-16-2010, 12:56 AM
Disagree. The negatives examples are the important ones. The people that sit around minding their own business aren't the ones who aren't important in the grand scheme of things. Radicals are the ones that cause problems because they're the ones who might decide that blowing up a building in the name of their god is a good idea.

Focusing on negative examples makes you stupid. The emphasis, as I understand, is on the "focus". I must have missed the suicide bombing assaults in the name of Christ in recent history.

You should realize that Christianity encompasses a vast spectrum of positions, opinions and convictions. The many people you don't hear about because they don't blow things up are currently sitting in congress, populate universities and laboratories in search of scientific progress (contrary to what some people might think, it's perfectly possible to be both religious and a scientist - if you think otherwise, you don't understand what either is about). Christianity is part of what they are. They choose not to make a big deal out of it. You might just as well denounce the entire ADOM player base as a legion of opiniated sanctimonious nitwits with the playing skills of a roasted baboon, just by the example I present on a regular basis.

(Btw: "Celebrating the death of somebody you disagreed with pretty much makes you a dick." is the 10th thing, as far as I understand.)

gut
08-16-2010, 03:56 AM
> There has never been anyone doing terrible things in the name of atheism.

I suppose we read some different history books.

> was a vegetarian, but we don't say he committed genocide in the name of vegetarianism

would if he rounded up meat eaters.

>>"3. In Everyday Life, You're Not That Different"

> To me, this is a problem for religious folk. They ought to be

Presence of belief would make one a better driver, worker, sleeper? I disagree.

> morality can and did evolve.

Yes, I used to see it displayed on the news daily.

> people that sit around minding their own business aren't the ones who aren't [are?]
> important in the grand scheme of things. Radicals are the ones that cause problems

Disagree again, and think maybe you watch too much tv. How many americans
died in 9/11 attacks? 3000? 5000? By contrast, here's some data about
traffic deaths from the same year: http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx
For those too lazy to click, it was > 40K. Not one american I've ever met
can tell me how many of us died last year in transit, yet they are
happy to tolerate war, record debt, crap economy, increased fed spying,
international resentment, etc... because of 9/11. I do believe it is these
'unimportant' people, the ones who 'mind their own business' that do hold
the record for humanoid slaying. Just because tv doesn't drill traffic
death data on 24 hour cycles doesn't mean it's not 10x more deadly than
terrorism. Don't even get me started on tobbaco.

> His argument that religion is necessary for morality is false

as I said before, if I didn't fear god, I'd slay you all

> it's perfectly possible to be both religious and a scientist

newton :D

JellySlayer
08-16-2010, 05:31 AM
In the name of stamping out Religion the Communists in Russian and China under Mao and others systematically murdered millions dwarfing the totals of virtually every religion in the world combined including Islam.

Mao and Stalin were communists. That they were atheists is largely coincidental--their interest wasn't in stamping out religion per se, it was in stamping out ideologies that were incompatable with communism, of which some religions happen to be.

Hilter was a devout Roman Catholic.

That said, would you seriously doubt that had that the opportunity, resources, and a modern military, that Islamic nations wouldn't be just as brutal? How about Joshua in the Bible? Or the Crusaders?


No atheist charities exist save for the promulgation of atheism.

Atheism isn't a political movement. Atheists don't typically get together to discuss their hatred of God and to spread their ideological beliefs. There are many charities that are not religiously affliated, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, that an atheist might choose to believe in, depending on what ideology they subscribe. There are, for example, a number of humanist charities as well.


Atheists in my experience do every bit as much proselytizing if not more than most Christians.

How do you proselytize a lack of belief in something?


You can reverse that argument and say that no one has done a lot of good in the name of atheism, either. There have been great atheists doing wonderful things, but they didn't say they did it because they were atheist.

I would agree with this. Nobody does anything in the "name of atheism". Atheism isn't really a philosophy per se.


The negative examples are just as important as the positive examples and even the inbetween examples. By assigning importance to one group does make you stupid. It narrows perspective.

It is much easier to be spectacularly evil than to be spectacularly good, and the influence of a spectacular evil is much greater than that of a spectacular good.


Focusing on negative examples makes you stupid. The emphasis, as I understand, is on the "focus". I must have missed the suicide bombing assaults in the name of Christ in recent history.

Christians don't normally do suicide bombings. They have bombed abortion clinics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-abortion_violence) as one example. The Christian Right in the United States has also been actively (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FG08Ak01.html) working (http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/1288/8812031.htm) to destabilize the Middle East (http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Crusade-Christian-International-Political/dp/1845117557). The fact that there are people sitting in the American Congress who believe that there will be a world-ending global war within the next decade or two is a pretty frightening prospect.


Disagree again, and think maybe you watch too much tv. How many americans
died in 9/11 attacks? 3000? 5000?

I don't watch TV at all, actually, and I don't even live in the United States.

How many people have died in Afghanistan so far? 100,000? 500,000? I don't think it's unreasonable to place those deaths, at least in part, at the hands of radical Islamists. I don't think it's unreasonable to place the deaths of at least as many Iraqis, at least in part, at the feet of Christian fundamentalists in the United States. I also don't think it's unreasonable to believe that if the Islamists had access to the military forces available to the United States, that they would not be as restrained in their use of them as the West has been. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that thousands of people have been senselessly murdered in religious courts in Saudi Arabia because of their irrational beliefs in Islam. Radical cause problems because they believe that the only thing that matters is what happens in the next life, and are prepared to sacrifice anyone or anything in this life to attain their rewards in heaven. This type of belief system is extraordinarily malevolent.

gut
08-16-2010, 06:51 AM
> Mao and Stalin were communists. That they were atheists is largely coincidental

I somehow doubt that was a condolence to the religious people they murdered.

> --their interest wasn't in stamping out religion per se,

I seem to recall the phrase 'religion is poison', but again, different books.

> Hilter was a devout Roman Catholic.

I don't know much of catholocism, but I doubt many catholics would repeat
the above statement.

> doubt that had that [they?] the opportunity, resources, and a modern military,
> that Islamic nations wouldn't be just as brutal?

If memory serves, iran has never launched a pre-emptive strike against any nation.

> Christian Right in the United States has also been actively working to
> destabilize the Middle East.

Yes, especially the food donating. Our hope is that they will fight over it.

> believe that there will be a world-ending global war within the next decade

congress had them in the 50's too, more actually. we somehow managed

The point of that section of the article was to prove that bad deeds
have been perpetrated by believers and non. You agree that the believer's
bad deeds are valid, yet claim the bad deeds of non-believers aren't
valid, as they didn't previously declare that they were acting in the
name of non-believing. Then you state this:

> How do you proselytize a lack of belief in something?

mass murdering believers seems an effective option.

> I don't watch TV at all, actually, and I don't even live in the United States.

Yay! (about no tv, not geography)

> I don't think it's unreasonable to place those deaths, at least in part,
> at the hands of radical Islamists.

There is plenty of blame to be distributed. I place more blame for the afghani
deaths upon vengence seekers. I remember no cries for 'justice' coming from
any religious organizations. Quite the contrary from secular sources.

> unreasonable to place the deaths of at least as many Iraqis, at least
> in part, at the feet of Christian fundamentalists

Hogwash. The push for Iraq war was from uncle sam, not churches. Do not
equate the fed with religion, regardless of what they spout.

> if the Islamists had access to the military forces available to the United
> States, that they would not be as restrained in their use

Debatable. Iran will soon have nuke capability. This scares US politicians to
no end, yet I sleep easy.

> they believe that the only thing that matters is what happens in the next
> life, and are prepared to sacrifice anyone

You quote an extreme. The counter would be an athiest that says it's OK to
eat humans, as they're just animals... but you would call that invalid, as
he didn't first proclaim he was eating in the name of atheism.