I submit that all this codling we're doing to the unfit demographics is making human evolutin slow down or even run backwards.

I'm done playing Devil's advocate.

Yutz proving his point....

I don't know whether to laugh or rage.

no point in rage

So much to say... which is already said by Joseph Campbell.

And sadly, that's what most people think Darwin's fascinating theory is.

It is hard for me to explain this. I am a christian and believe in god and Jesus. I believe in the principles of Christianity. However i do not believe in the Bible. Yeah I believe the basic concepts, but a lot of the stories are hard for me to accept. The Bible is written by men. I do not believe in men. I believe in God. Simple. Can I prove God exists, no. But I still believe he does. And I would never try to prove it to another man. I don't have to and they do not have to listen or believe me. I believe all are free to choose. Those who want proof can ask for it. I can offer them no proof they desire, but it will not change my opinion.

The Bible sways many. I do not believe it should as many let a book rule their life rather than the concepts of the religion.

It is hard to explain and many argue or do not understand my view, but it is what I decided to think.

Blind faith is a hard thing to explain as well. It can be good or bad depending on what context someone has it in. Some people can be blind in faith when they choose an option we as human know is morally wrong and should not happen, but to them it is how things are.

I do not follow the church. I do not follow the Bible. I do, however, have a sense of spirituality and a concept of life as a connection of all things is one way or another. I just spent the past few hours (like 3 to 6 AM) watching Atheist propaganda, and I understand every concept and every argument they make. I'd like the sources they used, but I digress. The church and it's brutal past can smb.

Life is it's own miracle.

I'm surprised that my mom hasn't caught on that when I do my "pastor voice" at grace it's in a mocking manner. Instead she tells me to be a priest. Ha ha, no.
Ooh, that gives me an idea of another argument to make. For the moment, lets say there is a God who created our live and imbued us with a soul. This ultimate gift of existence is just that: a gift. Why would a loving, compassionate being who created you to live, ask you to make everything you do with your life in order to perpetuate the greatness of that being? I can understand thankfulness, but what is the point in giving someone something to do with it what they will, and then demand that they work for you? It's like asking a carpenter to build you a palace because you gave them the supplies, so they should stop bitching and build the damn castle. And make sure it has your name written on it so no one forgets who you are.

Now please pick apart my arguments so I can fix them. Seriously.

well.. this will be hard to explain without anyone misunderstand me or wants to throw bricks at me...

First i want to say:, I dont follow the bible, but i like to think there is something out there.

For me religion is not a question, it is not a statement. Its an answer to the questions in your life that dont have an answer like: Why? How? If god exist, he gave us the church to bring us comfort in the time of need.
Religion is something beautiful, something sacred, and should be treated as such. Couse its there when we need it, if we need it.
And not be used as a tool for different means.

But we arent alike. we dont need the same answers, so we cant be expected to believe in the same things.

And for last, i wanna say that the choise of words arent the grandest in this quote, but the meaning is what im after. You should never try to enforce your beliefs on others, especially children.


Please ask and question my statements if you feel like it. =)

This is all a miracle!.

Serious discussion, please.

(I scribbled up a post and then thought "Shit, when was the last post in this thread even made? Over two years ago, whoops! Oh well, at least it's a sticky!)

Oh boy, Nosebleed made some great posts here, I'm inspired to doodle one up of my own. I don't put any stock into a celestial boogie man, nor do I have any faith in any ancient books of sacred fairy tales. What caught my eye was this wee bit from the first post on the Christian Bible "I'd be interested to see someone make a conclusive case that it IS a work of fiction."

Unfortunately extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I can hand you my copy of Grimm's Fairy Tales and ask you to find any conclusive case that it's false, in all honesty, that's not even the point of it. It's about the moral lessons of the stories within the book, and how one book is viewed by some as the literal word of a supreme divine being and used as a definitive guide for people to live their lives by.

However, if you want a wee bit of Bible dubunking, I can bring up the fact that there's no evidence that the Jews built the pyramids. From there, pretty much every story dependent on Moses really loses a lot of it's footing, but a story where a man turned a staff into a snake and split up a sea long enough for people to cross over to the other side, there really shouldn't have been a question as to whether or not it's fiction.

As for the origins of life, I take a comfort in believing that random events lead up to right now. I mean, if that meteor didn't hit the Earth and led extinction of the Dinosaucers a few million years ago, then there could possibly have intelligent reptile creatures wondering the exact same questions we are now. If Mars or Venus were just a bit closer/farther from the sun, they could possibly have intelligent life too. We're all just lucky enough to have a string of ancestors who were at the right place at the right time with the right evolutionary advantages to pass on their genes. If you factor in every failed life form that isn't alive to today, you'd certainly have a hell of a case to bring to our supreme divine creator, because I highly doubt it could say "I just designed them that way!" when explaining why Kiwis just freeze when a predator approaches them. I'll totally excuse it thought if it says "I thought it was really funny to make them like that!"

However the idea that we were all made last Tuesday 4000 or so years ago is the absolute silliest one, but I'll buy that you believe that there was some greater being who established the fundamental laws of the universe and did a lot of amazing cosmic magic shit to create the absolute beginning of everything we know. Though, if I were to accept a belief like that, I want it to be the idea that we're all digital beings living in a massive virtual universe that's being controlled by some adolescent white suburbanite with a really powerful computer. We're probably not even a blip on their radar, we're some speck of dust in some game they're playing or a school project.

I saw a series on Science talking about some events depicted in the Bible and going along the line of logic of, "what if this event did happen, can we find an explanation for it?" It was pretty interesting overall. And as it turns out, there's a lot of phenomena that could have occurred and been recorded by witnesses as "miracles", but was just extraordinary natural events.

There's a researcher trying to show that ... you can indeed "part the sea" ... in the very specific place where the Bible claims Moses did it. It turns out there's a pressure system there that makes it possible and it might just have been really good timing. They use a combination of practical experiments and historical anthropologists to figure out a non-religious explanation for how some of these events might have occurred. Meaning that ... they still might have occurred, just not for the reasons that are given. It's pretty interesting stuff.

In terms of ancient evolution threads ... if things didn't evolve from other things, how come we can flip genetic switches in chicken embryo's to make them grow teeth, scales, and tails? This is not new genetic information deposited into them, this is just dormant genetic traits.

Anecdotally, is the idea of evolution really so farfetched? I think a lot of people get hung up on two things 1) the way evolution is explained and 2) they want everything to conform to what they were told.

If you live by number 2 ... then you shouldn't even be having a discussion of any kind, because you're not actually discussing anything, you're trying to win an argument and make people yield to your way of thinking ... which is not a very productive way to increase knowledge, fyi.

In terms of number 1, evolution is usually described as, "natural selection", or explained in terms of choice. But these are just figurative terms. Because it's a process that takes several generations and a lot of time.

However, here's an anecdotal thought process:
Consider that your genetics, as we have learned, are not set in stone. They change. They change because of your state, age, health, living conditions, everything affects which of your genes are active and which are not. When animals (including humans) mate there are thousands of combinations possible ... just with those two individuals. So, any number of mutations happen. Most are normal, some are not.

If you have a creature whom has ...

Another way to think about it ...

In terms of ... our specific path of evolution, this is definitely up for debate ... but the very core idea of evolution absolutely does exist. You might as well say 1 = 2 when you say it doesn't, because that'd be just as correct (not at all)

It seems that the main issue people have with this idea is that it would mean ... we may not have been lovingly hand crafted. But I don't see how this wouldn't make the existence of our species any less significant ... in fact, it kind of makes it more significant considering any number of other things that could have happened.

Fucking THIS.

I have always felt that the random nature in which we came together is more of a miracle than anything depicted in any religious tome. Hell, just think about all the possible ways your life could have ended up had one decision or event gone a different way. What happened to us along the way that caused us to become these fantastic machines with billions or operations happening every single second which allow us to live the way we do? Search me but the fact that it fell in to such perfect alignment given the variables is what I believe is the true miracle.

We could have ended up with no arms and five mouths, who knows.

This is a bit of a wild out there thought ... but could people's modern doubling down on creationism, in this sense, be related to their reliance on commercialism and consumerism?

I know ... it kind of sounds wacko liberalese ... but the idea that we were specifically designed means that ... we'd be a really common assembly line object, but just on a cosmic scale. If that's the case ... I'd like to propose a question ... how special do people think tires are? Or Happy Meals ... or plastic chew toys. Or even something useful ... like batteries. These are all great things to have (Happy Meals withstanding ) but ... they're not miraculous or special in any way. They're manufactured objects. And, I'd personally like to think my blueprints didn't roll off an assembly line. But ... people kind of worship assembly lines now. It's kind of been engrained in us in modern culture as this wonderful amazing thing ... I don't know ... I hope some people think about this.

Also ... even if our current species is off the basis of evolution ... it doesn't even invalidate creationism as an idea. Because ... we still don't know how the entire chain of events got kick started. The idea that it's chance is amazing. And the idea that it was the most complicated chain of dominoes ever set up is also amazing. What is not amazing is the idea of some being just slapping some goo together to design something ... like an engineer using Solid Works. That's actually pretty fucking boring.
As a result of this, the fundamental offense people take astounds me.