rational person: What’s it gonna take for you to believe the truth, that everything in this world developed from single-celled organisms over billions of years?
Creationist(flat tone): Flying monkeys, Pigs with wings, or a slug that eats algae and shits photosynthesis.
Well, I don’t think we’ve found any of the first two (yet) but… Meet the first slug to eat algae and shit photosynthesis!
It even looks like a leaf! Awesome!
Eat that, creationists.
edit:
Since we’ve gotten such an enthusiastic creationist response from what was intended to be a small, mocking post shoving evolution in the face of those ID bastards who are trying to make everyone christian, I’ve decided to add a few things here that everyone in this ‘debate’ should see.
and as to what I think of you personally, Joshua, well, Mr. Dawkins said it best.
The Blog For Everything by Arthur 
I saw this and had to comment:
In reply to your question on what it would take to believe evolution:
It would take a massive robot that evolved out of a vacuum, was capable of
1. creative thought,
2. reproducing both it’s own kind and creating other species of robot
3. automatically repairing itself
4. Generating it’s own power
5. Generating matter from nothing.
That’s a small selection of what an evolutionist believe, right?
And on to the slug. Its a slug. Wow! It eats algae, like other fish/animals. Wow! Its capable of photosynthesis, like animals, plants and humans. Wow! What was you’re point?
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Humans are capable of photosynthesis? Fascinating!
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You know, creationist, I approved your comment for three reasons:
1. It sounds utterly ridiculous, and serves only to enhance my position (btw, thanx)
2. it was the only damned response I got;
and 3. – We can’t stop here, this is SLUG COUNTRY – lol
I’m going to quote Barney Frank here. ‘Trying to argue with you would be like arguing with my dining room table. I have no interest in doing it.’
Pwned.
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BTW – Poe’s Law.
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Oh and here’s another point that I just thought of for that discussion we were having 2 weeks ago…
But wait… like all your arguments so far, this one makes no sense and/or doesn’t apply. Are you saying you’re a creationist posing as an evolutionist to start a flame war? Or are you saying that I’m an evolutionist posing as a creationist to start a flame war?
Or are you quoting Edgar Allen Poe’s Law, saying this poetry has gone on long enough because the reader’s attention will wane? That would make more sense… except this isn’t poetry.
Kirk Cameron? We have Chuck Norris. Discussion over!
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Hmm. I self-invoked Godwin to end a discussion I was bored with, with a person I frankly considered to be the epitome of self-delusion. Unfortunately, a corollary to Godwin that I was not aware of is that self-invoking Godwin’s law is an invalid application. Thus the secondary invocation by Badger is inapplicable. and thus the discussion is still open. Dammit.
Now, I heavily edited your post (because it was a REALLLLY long, boring post, and I can’t be bothered to respond (again) with detailed, scientific proofs that not only are you wrong, but you KNOW YOU ARE and refuse to admit it.) – so in response to the only points that weren’t a re-hash of everything you’d said (and I’d refuted) before, here’s what I have to say:
About Poe – I’m speaking specifically about the point at which the fundamentalist P.O.V. becomes wacko enough, and becomes indistinguishable from parody. I honestly couldn’t tell for sure if you were joking. obviously not, given the following discussion. unless you’re a much better parodist than I give you credit for. IMHO you’re certainly ridiculous enough to qualify for Poe’s Law’s limit, though…
About your assertion regarding validity – Like all my arguments so far, this one certainly makes sense, and definitely applies. Saying that something you want to be true, is true, doesn’t make it so, Joshie. Better luck some other time.
About Chuck Norris – I don’t care what lame ass celebrity you trot out, unless they’re in possession of hard proof, I don’t wanna hear it.
Matter of fact, here’s what you need to do.
Prove to me that the invisible pink unicorn doesn’t exist.
Then prove to me that your god(s) do(es). And while you’re at it, prove that all the other Gods, Goddesses, and minor deities that your personal religion says don’t exist, don’t exist.
THEN you can trot Chuck out.
I know these four things to be true, based upon research and independent fact verification from the majority of the (educated) world ^^
1: We evolved in the past, and are continually evolving now. Have you ever seen suits of armor from the fourteen hundreds? those guys were midgets! We’re not midgets now, and the reason is because of preferential breeding over the course of seven hundred years – which is exactly what evolution is about.
2: The overwhelming majority of those who have had an education (equivalent to or surpassing two year college), those who have done hard scientific research on the subject, and those who have true objectivity, agree with me. Not you.
3: The overwhelming majority of people who agree with you are under-educated, malnourished, impoverished, mentally handicapped, reside in a third-world country, or multiple of the above. They also tend to believe in UFO’s and the death penalty while being anti-abortion.
4: The amount of people who agree with me is growing, thanks in no small part to the determined efforts of people like you and Fred Phelps. The amount of people who agree with you is shrinking.
So good luck, and good riddance.
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Chuck Norris went hunting.
There were no survivors.
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You’re a really bad debater.
Finally you have a valid point. But it goes both ways: Saying that something you want to be true, is true, doesn’t make it so.
Obviously its impossible to prove or disprove the existence of God, gods, goddesses or pink unicorns. But matter and energy came from somewhere… Or did it?
You 14th century armour point is easily explained by diet changes. And refuted by saying: But “more evolved” Asians are shorter than whites or blacks”. Maybe in the 14th century they were “more evolved” than now?
And your next point is “other people believe what I believe”. Good point. More people believe what I believe though including the majority of Americans (though they fit your description:under-educated, malnourished, impoverished, mentally handicapped). Those that don’t are looking for an excuse to justify their lifestyle, be it homosexual or abortionist or murderous… (boom goes the dynamite!)
And I guess your description of “hard scientific research” is reading an evolution-biased book. I bet that’s where they get their “true objectivity”!
Thanks for editing out my points you didn’t like/couldn’t answer….
I’m going to have to end it here unless you have a point you think I can’t refute. This is too easy!
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What exactly is an abortionist lifestyle? Do you just have to support people’s right to choose to qualify? Do you have to perform abortions? Or do you just have to get one? If so, how many are needed to qualify?
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Lol.
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Bye-bye, then – and good riddance to bad rubbish.
I’m glad you admit my point’s validity – and I’m not sorry to say, it doesn’t go both ways.
I have reams and reams of evidence on my side.
You have a book of fairy tales your momma (statistically speaking) probably read you to sleep with at night.
There’s something you missed with my request for proof. If I said I had an invisible pink unicorn, or for that matter an untouchable, heatless, invisible fire-breathing dragon in my garage, you couldn’t prove me wrong – but what would the point be of proving me wrong? I can just imagine the conversations.
Says one, “Ooh, look, I’ve got something ever so awesome in my garage, but you can’t see it, hear it, taste it or smell it, and it has absolutely no tangible effect on your life that is in any way measurable.”
Says the other, “Oh, yeah?” *eye roll* “Who cares?”
…. Diet changes. Okay, that’s an interesting one, and it does apparently affect height in certain specific cases. Here’s what wikipedia said:
“When populations share genetic background and environmental factors, average height is frequently characteristic within the group. Exceptional height variation (around 20% deviation from average) within such a population is usually due to gigantism or dwarfism; which are medical conditions due to specific genes or to endocrine abnormalities.
{here’s what I expect you’ll be quoting from, so I put it in with full context. – ed.}
In regions of extreme poverty or prolonged warfare, environmental factors like malnutrition during childhood or adolescence may account for marked reductions in adult stature even without the presence of any of these medical conditions. This is one reason that immigrant populations from regions of extreme poverty to regions of plenty may show an increase in stature, despite sharing the same gene pool.”
However, the trend over time has been towards taller people, even when environmental factors have been accounted for. And the specific reason I chose to point out armor is because those who were given armor were the richest, best-fed, and best exercised of the time – thus the environmental factors can be easily accounted for, and they were still WAAAY shorter than us.
Another article from wiki –
“Height is, like other phenotypic traits, determined by a combination of genetics and environmental factors. A child’s height based on parental heights is subject to regression toward the mean, therefore extremely tall or short parents will likely have correspondingly taller or shorter offspring, but their offspring will also likely be closer to average height than the parents themselves. Genetic potential plus nutrition minus stressors is a basic formula.”
“The precise relationship between genetics and environment is complex and uncertain. Human height is 60%-80% heritable, according to several twin studies and has been considered polygenic since the Mendelian-biometrician debate a hundred years ago.”
*eye roll* Uh-huh. So apparently all the educated, intelligent, well-fed middle-class to upper-class people are deviants or law breakers. Wow. Been listening to Phelps, much? And I’m glad you admit the fact that the majority of the people who think like you are inbred, under-fed morons. It lends such a nice, convincing touch to your superior attitude.
… My description of hard scientific research is just that – hard scientific research. Laboratory studies with repeatable results, large experimental populations and control groups, few variables, and scientists with experience in the field of research that the experiment is in, recording measurable data accurately. That’s all.
And your alternative would be a religious person praying to themselves to get their true objectivity, then?
Maybe I should ask the pope, that child-molester, and see what he thinks.
I don’t care that you think you’re right.
I don’t care that you think all the rubbish you’re spewing actually counters any of my arguments – all you’re doing is muddying the waters to try and buy your god a few moments more breathing room/credence. Science continues to close the gap every day between 99.9999999999999% proof and positive, concrete 100% proof that god(ess)(es) doesn’t exist at all.
have fun with the evolutionary dead-end of belief in a supernatural being.
“Although I did not think much about the existence of a personal God until a considerably later period of my life, I will here give the vague conclusions to which I have been driven. The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows. Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws.” – Charles Darwin
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I should apologies; I thought you were retarded (because you believe something that is scientifically imposable while saying you’re rational) so I said that humans were capable of photosynthesis. Technically, this isn’t true. Humans are capable of converting sunlight into carbon-based vitamins (vitamin D for instance), which are more complex than carbon-dioxide. That said humans use those vitamins to operate lungs that produce carbon dioxide. Why do you consider photosynthesis advanced?
Let’s not argue. Let’s discuss.
I’ll counter by addressing your points.
1. I agree. It sounds insane that the most advanced being in the universe could come about by accident. I don’t understand how any person could believe that.
It’s like saying “if you want a faster/better/more powerful computer – shake it. Eventually all the parts will from better parts and reconnect and it will work better than it did before”. Do you see the similarity with evolutionary theory?
2. Try not insulting the people you want to get a response from. That should work a little better.
3. How old are you, honestly? From the sound of it I would guess 15-20. You wrote “Pwned” and that I “enhanced you position” when I discounted all your previous points and you gave no clear new point.
I eagerly await your response.
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First, try not to be hypocritical in your first paragraph, it tends to get a debate off on the wrong foot. “I thought you were retarded” and objection no. 2 don’t go well together.
However, against my better judgment (see my Barney Frank quote above), I’ll respond.
So let’s take it from the top, shall we?
first point : Actually, I wasn’t saying that accidental genesis was insane. I specifically said ‘your comment’ not ‘a specific argument within your comment’.
Your original post posited, like your second post, that machines and biology are similar in complexity, and that supposing random chance in the creation of either is absurd.
Here’s a mountain of evidence that specifically, and in detail, refutes that argument.
By the way, the argument you’re using is a variation on the Watchmaker argument known as Hoyle’s Fallacy. You can look it up on Wikipedia or you tube or any number of other sites to verify that I’m not making it up. I quote here from the excellent essay on the subject by the creator of the web site Ebon Musings (here’s the essay entire)
:
“In his 1983 book The Intelligent Universe, astronomer Fred Hoyle wrote the following infamous passage:
“A junkyard contains all the bits and pieces of a Boeing 747, dismembered and in disarray. A whirlwind happens to blow through the yard. What is the chance that after its passage a fully assembled 747, ready to fly, will be found standing there? So small as to be negligible, even if a tornado were to blow through enough junkyards to fill the whole Universe.” (p.19)
‘Though Hoyle actually intended this as an argument against abiogenesis, the creationists have since assimilated it and used it against evolution. In creationist literature, this argument has mutated into a diversity of forms: setting off an explosion in a print shop to produce a dictionary, disassembling a watch and shaking up the pieces in a box to reassemble it,’ … ‘and so on. No matter what form the analogy takes, however, creationists have promoted it as a common-sense proof of the impossibility of evolution producing complex, highly ordered forms.’ …
‘We turn now to the tornado in the junkyard. This analogy says nothing about the validity of evolution, or for that matter abiogenesis, because it fails to represent them in four crucial ways.
1. It operates purely according to random chance.
2. It is an example of single-step, rather than cumulative, selection.
3. It is a saltationary jump – an end product entirely unlike the beginning product.
4. It has a target specified ahead of time.
‘The first point is the most important. The tornado in the junkyard is an example of an intricate, complex and highly organized form being produced by nothing more than random chance. But evolution is not chance.’ . . . ‘Rather, it operates according to a fixed law – the law of natural selection – which favors some assemblages over others; it preferentially selects for those adaptations which improve fitness and selects against those that do not. The tornado, by contrast, slams parts together and tears them apart with no preference whatsoever, thus completely failing to represent natural selection, the central force which drives evolution. To more accurately represent evolution, one would have to grant the tornado some power to recognize assemblages of parts which could serve as part of a 747 and prevent it from tearing them apart.
‘Second, the tornado analogy is an example of single-step selection – in one step, it goes from a random pile of parts to a fully assembled airliner. This is completely unlike evolution, which operates according to a process of cumulative selection – complex results that are built up gradually, in a repetitive process guided at each step by selective forces. To more accurately represent evolution, the tornado could be sent through the junkyard not once, but thousands or millions of times, at each step preserving chance assemblages of parts that could make up a jumbo jet.
‘Third, in relation to the point above, the tornado in the junkyard is an example of saltation – a sudden leap in which the end product is completely different from the beginning product. Evolution does not work this way; birds do not hatch out of dinosaur eggs and monkeys do not give birth to humans. Rather, species grow different over time through a process of slow change in which each new creature is only slightly different from its ancestor. Evolution forms a gradually shading continuum in which any two steps are almost identical, though the creatures at the beginning and end of the continuum may be very different indeed. If we sent a tornado through a junkyard once, we would not expect to see a complete airplane; but if we repeated the process thousands or millions of times, at each step preserving useful assemblages, we might see a jumbo jet gradually taking shape out of slowly accreting collections of parts. The idea is the same with living things. We do not see complex new creatures appearing suddenly in the fossil record; rather, we see them gradually forming by a process of modification from a line of increasingly dissimilar ancestors.
‘Finally, the tornado analogy fails to represent evolution in one more significant way: it has a target specified ahead of time. Evolution does not. Natural selection is not a forward-looking process; it cannot select for what may become useful in the future, only what is immediately useful in the present. To more accurately represent evolution, we might add the additional stipulation that the tornado be allowed to assemble, not just a jumbo jet, but any functional piece of machinery.
‘A tornado racing through a junkyard hundreds of thousands of times, at each step somehow preserving rather than tearing apart functional assemblages of parts, with the aim of ultimately producing some sort of working machine, be it a 747, a station wagon or a personal computer – this is still not a very good analogy to describe evolution, but it is far better than the implausible caricature of random, single-step saltation with a predetermined target the creationists put forth. This analogy completely fails to represent evolution in every significant way.”
So that’s it, for both your original argument, and for point one of your second post.
Your second point is that I’m rude. I concede the point.
Your third is an implied insult aiming at my real or intellectual age. I refer you to your own second point.
I believe that is what the kids these days are calling Pwnd, sir. Check and mate.
Your grammar is horrendous. Invest in a spell check, PLZ.
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Sorry about my hypocrisy, and the correctly spelled but improperly used word. I don’t think my grammar is horrendous, bad maybe, but not horrendous.
I’ll try to work through spatially:
1. I don’t see how the slug proves or disproves either of our opinions.
2. (your point 1) We agree that accidental genesis is insane/impossible. I’ll assume you know what I believe, but how do you suppose biology began, if not by accident? And to that answer, wouldn’t that imply a saltationary jump?
3. Hoyle’s Fallacy: good points, but all invalid. (My points counter your quoted numbered points)
i. For biogenesis to occur (without God) it would be random. Natural selection doesn’t apply to non-biological entities and with no other forces how else could biogenesis occur? Aliens?
ii. It’s either biological or it isn’t. If it is to become biological it has to be a single step.
iii. It is a saltationary jump. From non-biological to biological. I know that neo-Darwinian thought doesn’t agree with saltation, but its a huge jump from say, dirt to bacteria. HUGE!
iv. Biogenesis implies a specific target – its the “bio” in “biogenesis”.
I know I’m not going to disprove evolution to you, but you should have a closer look because I’ve found it to be scientifically impossible (spelt it right that time) and I’m sure that if you do you’ll find the same.
4. For simple things to become more complex breaks the second law of thermodynamics.
5. Certain species could never evolve without killing themselves (the Bombardier Beetle for example – look into it).
6. Genetic mutations happen all the time – several times in my own family. But we call them cancer and usually they result in death…
I’m trying not to be an idiot but I may come across as a jerk, that’s not all creationists, just me.
I guess we both have unswerving views, which leads to arguments.
As fun as this is, I don’t know how much longer I can go on…
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Ultimately here’s what this debate comes down to:
On the side of science we have a couple hundred years of biological science backed up by a great deal of chemistry. We have an extensive fossil record. We have reams of theoretical, mathematical and physical evidence.
On the side of creationism we have a book of Bronze Age fairy tales written over two-thousand years ago. Oh, and Kirk Cameron.
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I approve this message. and since it’s been a long discussion, and I really don’t feel like another six page, detailed refutation of what you cut and pasted off of ‘Answers In Genesis’ or some such site, I’m gonna call this argument closed. We’re done here.
Nazis.
I invoke Godwin’s Law.
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Debate fail. 😛
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Did you think we theists believe in God with no proof? Do you think 4.5 billion people have been tricked; fooled by some invisible man?
I’ve seen the dead rise. I’ve seen the disabled walk. I’ve seen the blind see and the deaf hear. I’ve felt the presence of God and seen demonic forces manifest at the name of Jesus. I’ve seen lives completely changed. Addicts set free. People with mental illness healed instantly! I was there. That was me. I’ve seen the impossible happen in Jesus name.
All exactly as described in my “bronze-age fairy tale”.
Did you think I’m uncertain of the existence of God?
Was it a delusion? Was I dreaming?
Your question should be, “can I PROVE it to you?” No, I can’t. I was there, and you weren’t.
But were you there at the point of evolutionary biogenesis? Have you witnessed one species evolve into another? Or maybe you read about it in a book written by someone who did? Or is it just a theory that lets you live your life without consequences?
I’ll keep my “fairytale-my-momma-read-me-at-night”, you keep your unobserved, unrepeatable “science”.
I realise now that I will never change your opinion. I hope you can learn to tolerate mine even if you don’t fully understand it.
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1) yes, yes I do.
2) Wow. Can I have some of whatever you took?
3)Well, no. Obviously. Your rigid mindset and schizoid delusions make it very clear that you’re Christian, and worse, a ‘true believer’. . . very similar psychologically to U.F.O. nuts and conspiracy theorists.
4)Yes and yes.
5) anecdotal evidence FAIL… Pics or it didn’t happen. LOL
6) No, I absolutely wasn’t. Unlike you, we actually CAN reproduce biogenesis in a laboratory. Witnessing one species evolving…. actually, l have. Ever heard of the banana? the coffee bean? the strawberry? I’ve witnessed their evolution firsthand, and so have you if you occasionally eat bananas or strawberries, or drink coffee. And no, no it isn’t. I resent the libelous statement on my good character.
7)You go ahead and live in a dream-world, and let the rest of us take care of the world as it is. As I’ve said before, as long as you don’t interfere in politics, education, or anything else that might impact my life, I have no problem with you practicing your little voodoo cult. If you do, then I get to slam on you and it, and prove the two of you wrong.
8)You don’t get it. This isn’t an opinion. This is fact. And you’re fiction. So, no. I will never ‘tolerate’ the dilution of fact with fiction. Oh, yeah, used to be christian. understand it fully. It’s a cult. ‘Nuff said.
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My good Christian senses tell me to stop here. But I’m really enjoying this. I hope you don’t mind that I will continue to reply to you.
2. Its called reality. Breath it in…
5. Hmmm… since you won’t accept eyewitness accounts I doubt you’ll accept picture, I’ll have to turn to youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMNLgJwYnu8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mikwMvQLsvA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LcrdJfBipk
6.
a. Holy crap! Really? Please provide details.
b. You didn’t really say a specific thing about bananas, coffee and strawberries – another winning argument! But after some research it turns out they’re all members of the berry family and can be interbreed like members of any other family. eg dogs, cats and people. So that doesn’t really prove evolution any more that breeding a labrador and a poodle to make a labradoodle…
c. Ha ha… funny.
7. Ok, but the reciprocal must be true also. If your pagan views interfere with in politics, education and anything else I like, I get to slam you and it and prove that the two of you are wrong.
8. I think its funny that you talk so much about dilution without seeing it in yourself. You’re so diluted you don’t take seriously anything I say – I say “I’ve seen miracles” you imply drug use and then you say “bananas” and think you’ve proven your point…
I’m interested to hear your story and how you became an atheist if you’re willing to tell it.
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you know, I’ve tried to reason with you. maybe that’s my failing… I keep on trying to reason with someone who willfully refuses to see reason. try watching this video. really listen to what is being said… please.
As for how I became an atheist, it’s really a simple story. I started out as a Christian. The logical inconsistencies in the Bible combined with the disconnect between what the text said, what people preached, and what was self-evidently right to do, got to be too much, and I became disillusioned regarding that particular faith in my teens.
(BTW ‘self-evidently right’ means everything that the bible advocates that’s morally and ethically wrong, from slavery through stoning somebody who badmouths his parents to killing a girl for not being a virgin. And lest you think that it doesn’t apply today, I bring up Matthew 5:17 – where Jesus basically signs off on all that and more.)
Not to mention that I never ever, even once, saw anything that proved to me that my faith was justified (that goes for any system of belief, btw, from abrahamic through zoroastrian). I didn’t think of it that way. I was a gullible teenager, and sincere in my belief… but looking back I can say with certainty that I never once heard any voice but my own in my head, as hard as I tried to convince myself otherwise.
Over the next ten years I alternated between being agnostic and following various alternative religions to Christianity, including Buddhism, Taoism, even Wicca and non-denominational pagan. None of them jibed logically. Each had moral or ethical errors, self-evident flaws. Each religion laid claims about miraculous, supernatural things that supposedly happen to that religion’s followers. No matter how hard I tried, I simply could not see anything but what was really happening. Matter of fact, it was during a spiritual ceremony that I finally gave up and let myself be okay with the fact that everyone else was pretending just as hard as I was, and that there was no point in pretending. There might be some people who believe sincerely enough to convince themselves that miraculous things are happening, but that’s all it is. Sincerely deluded people desperate for hallucinations, getting their wish.
I’m reposting this all as a blog entry because it’s easier to read that way.
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and in response –
2) Funny, I was about to say the same to you. *sardonically*
5)
Hmm. I see. well, given how much video evidence I’ve shown on my side, you’re right, I’d be a bit skeptical of a couple photos. But I’ll look at your videos. Hey, If you have solid proof of God or your religion on youtube, at least I’ll concede that there’s room for doubt…
vid#1: So… what, a couple photos of a guy with his eyes being rubbed. and a prayer tent. In what may or may not be Mozambique.
That’s not proof of anything. All I have is a voice-over telling me what she wants me to believe. I wouldn’t believe science if it were presented this way. Why should I believe something miraculous occurred when there’s no evidence of it? What you’re presenting me with here is strictly anecdotal.
Where’s the international media frenzy over this guy being cured from blindness? where’s the video of his cataracts (or whatever actually is causing the blindness, if he’s actually blind) receding? In other words, where is the third-party verifiability?
If the rest are this quality, I shouldn’t waste my time. *sighs* slogging on…
vid #2 – I’m wondering a few things. Who is that lady? is there any record of her having had any illness before she arrived? does she know the preacher? And no, I’m not going to take his or her word for it, that would be both gullible and naive. Remember James Randi and Peter Popoff? no? well, here you go. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7BQKu0YP8Y
You know, you still haven’t given me anything concrete. If you could show me god healing an amputee, I’d pretty much concede that God existed, and if He did it within the ritual confines of one particular faith, I’d probably convert. Why is it that you and I have never seen an amputee healed by God? In fact, why is it that no-one has seen an amputee healed? Does He just have something against amputees?
vid#3 – again, all you have is hearsay. I don’t want a story, I want actual proof of it happening. This is on the order of a U.F.O. story for Christians.
Why is it that all of these videos are in the developing nation? There are plenty of sick, wheelchair-bound, blind and dead men and women in the first world, even among the very faithful. Why is it that you can only find miracles happening in the third-world?
On to
6) Sure. but first, bananas. Bananas aren’t actually regular plants. And they weren’t put here by God’s will. They are a completely artificial fruit created by man, developed and nurtured by man, and shaped by man’s needs. This in and of itself is a key example of evolution, one that clears up a lot of misunderstandings people have about the theory. For one thing, Evolution doesn’t just deal with how we got here, it deals with how we go forward, too. For another, evolution doesn’t happen in a vacuum. When you talk about how plants of similar backgrounds can be bred together, that’s evolution too. When we tamper with the genetic structure of a plant by cross-breeding or selectively breeding for traits we like, we are doing what is called preferential selection, which is very much a part of darwinian evolution. A side note here: I’ve been looking into it, and even though we do have solid proof of how bio first genesis’d, it has nothing to do with evolution, because evolutionary theory has nothing to do with how life started, but rather with how different life forms have differentiated, multiplied, and diversified since life began. If you’d like to take issue with science on that, throw out your tv and microwave and go back to living in the woods – and no eating bananas, to bring me back to my point – bananas are sterile. completely man-made. They’re all clones of each other, going back to the original mule offspring of a couple plants that a)look horrible, b) taste bad or have waaaay too many seeds, etc.
So, actually, bananas can’t cross-breed with coffee or strawberries.
But my point is that they are examples of evolution at work. Strawberries are constantly being preferentially selected for highest yield/sweetest flavor/brightest color, to the point where strawberries I grow now grow larger, look noticeably brighter, and taste sweeter, than when I was a child. Coffee is constantly being hybridized and crossbred with other coffees to produce hardier or more flavorful strains… these are all the principles of evolution at work. The fact that we can do these things at all means that it can happen in the wild. And that is my proof of evolution happening in front of me. I witness it every day.
for a good example of a wild banana versus a real one.
By the way, dogs, cats, and people can interbreed? lol
j/k I get your point, but it operates from a misunderstanding about how evolution functions. check this out.
7 See but that’s the thing. I’m not pagan. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pagan
I’m an atheist. I don’t HAVE a religious point of view. Q.E.D.
8. I think you mean delusion here. but the difference is that I don’t see an invisible man, hear inaudible things, talk to people who aren’t there, or expect magical things to happen just because I want them to.
Extraordinary claims don’t require less proof to be accepted as true. Indeed, because the claims are extraordinary, they require extraordinary proof. You claim I’m deluded for not believing you. I say I would be an idiot to believe the things you tell me without the extraordinary amount of proof those claims require. That’s not delusion, that’s the essence of rationality.
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I love the idea of bananas and strawberries cross-breeding. It’d save me all that time with a blender.
Also, eyewitness accounts are notoriously dodgy, and videos are largely meaningless in a case such as this. I’d say if someone actually can heal the sick without medicine and raise the dead, etc, let them do so in a controlled situation and under laboratory conditions.
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At first I was a little bit pissed that you label all creationist as idiots, but I’m starting to enjoy this conversation:
My point all along has been that your reasoning is flawed; almost every point you’ve presented I’ve found flaws in. I don’t think you even explained the banana point. I’m entirely open to reason and logic whenever you’re ready to present it.
I watched the video. He makes some good points but his argument was against some dude who made a video, not God, god/s/ess/esses or the Bible. The best point he made is that putting reason and God together makes sense. But as we said long ago the existence of God can’t go either way based on physical evidence.
Thanks for your personal story, it’s an interesting one. Mine was very similar except when I was uncertain about God, I prayed and said “God if you’re real you better prove it”. And (to me) He did – supernaturally (but I was probably dreaming again). That said I can understand that you think many churches are hypocritical, boring charades. I say many because many are – the Catholic church is one of the worst (and that one where they picket funerals – what douches!). But there are “real” churches out there where the words and actions match.
With regard to your view of God something that helped me is to understand that as loving God is, He is also a destroyer (possibly an explanation for the Hindu god, Shiva). But He is the destroyer of destroyers, that is a protector of the innocent.
Biblically, God doesn’t do things for no reason. If you find an inconsistency its probably because you’re not looking in perspective. If you disagree present an example.
The verse you quoted is taken out of context – Jesus was saying that if you try to live by the law you will fail. If you’ve ever read the law you’ll know its impossible to follow entirely. But if it was possible Jesus would never have come and there would be no Christmas! See Galatians 3:10-14 for the purpose of the Law.
But enough about that, my purpose here was to discuss evolution. I saw in the news the discovery of the new “missing link”. But with a cranial capacity fitting ape, chimp and gorilla and 1/4 the size of human I had to think, “Isn’t that a gorilla?”. Given that there aren’t gorillas as far south as South Africa, maybe it’s an extinct variety…?
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The press loves the term “missing link”, but it’s largely meaningless in scientific terms. We’ll never have a totally complete fossil record (since that would probably require the bones of every individual of all the species that lead up to us), so there’s always going to be something missing. But what we have now is pretty complete.
I’m not sure what point you’re making with gorillas. Of course there’s a similarity between us, chimps, gorillas and all the primate species. That’s because we all share a common ancestor.
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Just FYI, I’ve moved this conversation over to a new post, since the debate was getting a bit crowded on this post. ^^ you can find that debate at https://arthurseverythingblog.wordpress.com/2010/04/09/
I’d appreciate new comments being directed to that post.
I’ve reproduced all the comments thus far faithfully, although I did omit one double post and tried to clean up the chronology as best I could.
We even have a comment already!
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